The Risk of Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

invited him to things but he would never turn up. “I wasn’t going to go to this dinner party, only someone was detailed to fetch me—they practically had to haul me out physically. When I walked into that room I was thinking of a way I could walk right out again, find some excuse to turn round and run. Then Isaw Lizzie standing by the fireplace … actually I saw two Lizzies—she was in front of a mirror.”
    “So you didn’t turn and run.”
    He had smiled at her, his face blazing up with sudden recollected joy. Then he remembered what Cat was now trying to tell him. “Lizzie has mad cow disease?”
    “That’s a hideous term. I won’t use it. Variant CJD.”
    “Oh, don’t hide behind words. Jesus Christ.”
    There was no way of discovering how long the disease had been lying dormant in her.
    “And it comes from eating meat?”
    “Infected beef, yes, but when, we can have no idea. Years ago probably.”
    “What will happen?” Max had stood up and leaned across her desk. “Plain words. What Will Happen? How and When? I need to know this.”
    “Yes,” Cat had said, “you do.” And had told him.
    The illness had run its terrible course very quickly. From depression to ataxia, with other mental symptoms that were harder for Max to bear—violent mood swings, increasing aggression, paranoia and suspicion, panic attacks and then hours of sustained fear. Lizzie had fallen over, lost her sense of taste and smell, become incontinent, been repeatedly sick. Max had stayed with her, nursed and cared for her, twenty-four hours a day. Her mother had come from Somerset twice but was not able to stay in the loft flat because of a recent hip replacement. Max’s mother had flown from Canada, taken one look at the situation andflown back home. He was on his own. “It’s fine,” Max said, “I don’t need anyone. It’s fine.”
    Cat went out of the apartment and down the strange, brick-lined stairwell, which still had the feel of a factory entrance, to the street, where she could get a signal on her phone and leave Max to be quiet with Lizzie.
    The Lafferton hospice, Imogen House, had a bed, and Cat made the necessary arrangements. The street was empty. At the end of it, there was the curious blackness which indicated the presence of water, even though there was nothing of the canal to be seen.
    The clock chimed on the cathedral tower, a short distance away.
    “Oh God, You make it very difficult sometimes,”Cat said aloud. But then prayed a fierce prayer, for the man in the apartment above, and the woman being taken away from it, to die.

Five
    The bleep of a mobile interrupted the orderly calm of the cathedral chapter meeting.
    The Dean paused. “If that’s important, do take it outside and answer it.”
    The Reverend Jane Fitzroy flushed scarlet. She had arrived in Lafferton a week earlier and this was her first full chapter meeting.
    “No, it can wait. I do apologise.”
    She pressed the off button and the Dean moved the agenda smoothly forwards.
    It was over an hour later before she could check the caller display. The last number was her mother’s, but when she rang back the answerphone was on.
    “Mum, sorry, I was in a chapter meeting. Hope you’re OK. Call me when you get this.”
    She spent the next couple of hours at Imogen House,to which she was now Chaplain, as well as being the Cathedral Liaison Officer at Bevham General hospital. The work would take her out into the community but bring her back to her base at the cathedral, where she would take a full share in the worship and ministry.
    At the moment, the most important part of her job was to get to know people, and let them size her up in turn, to listen and learn. It was an absorbing afternoon, at the end of which she sat with a man a few weeks off his hundredth birthday and determined, as he said, “to go for the telegram.” He was like a bird, a fledgling of skin and bone, tiny in the bed, his skin the colour of a tallow candle, but his eyes