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They were met in the reception lounge just inside the main doors. Mother Veronica Joseph began talking even before Bill and Janice came to a stop, as did an elderly doctor - Dr Webster - who quickly assuaged the pale and stricken parents in a calm, professional voice. Each went on talking animatedly, Bill and Janice trying to follow two streams of thought at once as they walked down the broad corridor, passing occasional nurses and other family groups clustered before half-open doors. The first dealt with what had happened - Mother Veronica Joseph’s low, stunned voice recreating, in detail, her eyewitness account of the accident, which had erupted without expectation and which, but for the quick action of Mr Calitri, might have ended in real tragedy. The other was more complex a stream, dealing with the extent and prognosis of Ivy’s injuries, which, they were assured, were mainly first-and second-degree burns, producing only a mild shock with no indication of a developing toxaemia or septicaemia.

‘Lucky she was so well bundled and there was all that snow around,’ Dr Webster encouraged. ‘Her body was completely untouched. Her face took some heat; however, there’s no indication of respiratory tract damage; we don’t see singed nasal hair, she’s not coughing, and her throat doesn’t seem hoarse. No expectoration of blood or carbon particles associated with inhalation of fire cases, just some transient racial swelling, redness on the left cheek, singed eyebrows and a few small developing blisters …’ He chuckled. ‘Nothing permanent to mar her good looks.’

Janice, walking well ahead of them, strained to hear their conversation, but the distance and Mother Veronica Joseph’s constant prattle made it impossible.

‘… I don’t mind your knowing, Mrs Templeton,’ the nun murmured softly and with a trace of self-righteousness, ‘that while nothing like this has ever happened before at Mount Carmel, it needn’t have happened this time. What I’m saying is that it was no accident. Your daughter literally walked, then crawled into that fire.’

Janice flinched. Then, with a shake of her head, she replied inadequately and with no conviction, ‘You must be mistaken. Why would she do a thing like that?’

‘That I cannot answer, Mrs Templeton. But I am not mistaken about what I saw. Understand, I am not saying that she was aware of what she was doing, only that it was no accident.’

Ivy was sitting up in bed, perusing a magazine sombrely. Her face, beneath the glistening medication, seemed lightly sunburned. Her long blond hair was singed in a ragged bob. The sight of Janice and Bill stirred her bruised senses, and unwilled tears rushed to her eyes. Bill and Janice hurried to her bedside but were cautioned by Dr Webster to desist from embracing her.

‘It’s all right, baby,’ Bill soothed, kneeling at her side and clutching her hand.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Janice held her other hand. For a time, Ivy could only look at her parents, back and forth at each face, in a lost, abject way and sob.

‘What happened to me anyway?’ she cried in a delirium of anguish. ‘What made me do such a thing?’

‘It was an accident, baby,’ Bill said in a soft, relaxing voice.

‘No, Daddy, I did it on purpose. They say I walked into the fire, and I don’t remember anything about it.’

Bill’s expression tightened. ‘Who says you did that?’

Ivy’s eyes sought the stately black-cloaked form standing at the foot of the bed. ‘Mother did,’ she said, weeping.

Bill ran a finger between his neck and his shirt collar.

‘She’s wrong,’ he said, then turned a hard, brutal face on Mother Veronica Joseph ‘What do you build fires for anyway?’ he rasped. ‘What kind of business is that in a convent? We send our children to you for peace and protection, and you build fires.’

In receipt of Bill’s anger, Mother Veronica Joseph made no reply. Silence quivered in the room until the old nun, her lips a thin, grim line, forced herself to speak.

‘I’ll wait outside,’ she said quietly, clutching her beads, and left.

Dr Webster coughed and in a hushed voice conferred with the nurse who was in the room, attentive and constant, yet so unobtrusive as to have escaped Janice’s notice.

‘What’s happening to me anyway?’ Ivy repeated in a continuing moaning lament. ‘What’s happening to me?’

Janice considered the question - a question unanswerable to all but herself - and one other person. There was never a doubt in her mind about who had been behind this murderous escapade, as there now was no doubt about Audrey Rose’s ultimate intentions. As Elliot Hoover had warned, ‘She will keep pushing Ivy back to the source of the problem; she’ll be trying to get back to that moment and will be leading Ivy into dangers as tormenting and destructive as the fire that took her life …’ Yes, Audrey Rose clearly had no compunction about showing her hand and would continue to have none. The consideration of how easily they could lose Ivy made her shudder. ‘Audrey will continue to abuse Ivy’s body until her soul is set free …’ There was nothing to hold her, nothing to make her even hesitate. Unless—

Janice sat stunned by her own thought. Sitting erect, almost wooden, listening to the soft and mending sounds of Bill’s voice gradually restore and calm their fear-stricken child, she gravely hesitated to pursue the thought, knowing with certainty that there could be only one possible result from such an act. Had the answer come to her too quickly? It was, in its way, a bizarre and capricious answer; still, it blazed in her head, for it seemed the only right answer. Tread lightly, a voice within her warned. Consider deeply. The next moves are fraught with peril. The decisions of the next twelve hours could blow up your world.

*

They didn’t leave the hospital till nine fifteen. Neither was surprised to find that Mother Veronica Joseph had not waited. They encountered Dr Webster in the reception lounge, chatting intimately with an elderly patient in a wheelchair.

Upon seeing the Templetons, he excused himself and joined them at the door. He reiterated his confidence that Ivy would be fine and would probably be discharged by the weekend. Janice asked if Nurse Baylor might be told to stay with Ivy through the night.

‘She’s off duty at twelve,’ the doctor said.

‘Isn’t there someone who replaces her?’ Janice asked.

‘Just the floor nurse, but there’s nothing to be concerned about, her TV monitor covers each room.’

Janice frowned. ‘Can’t you get someone to stay with her?’

Bill flashed her a quick look, then turned to the doctor.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘We’d be willing to pay for a private nurse, of course.’

Dr Webster thought a moment. There was an urgency in the request he felt he couldn’t ignore.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he finally said.

Outside, the snow had stopped and only a misty drizzle fell. Bill drove south on the Boston Post Road in search of a restaurant that wasn’t crowded and found one with a few cars parked in front, just south of Stamford.

The dining room was nearly empty. A waiter led the way to a table against the wall, apart from the ones that were occupied. Drinks were brought them, after which they ordered and consumed an unusually large dinner.

They did not talk until the steak plates were removed and-their drinks refilled. And then it was Bill who did the talking, not Janice. The things he said were pleasantly irrelevant, taxing neither her mind nor her emotions, which were deeply embedded in her own-private turmoil. She was grateful for Bill’s unwillingness to discuss the subject uppermost in both their minds. His attack on Mother Veronica Joseph had left no doubt about his feelings on the matter and was clearly intended as a warning to Janice as well.

To Bill, it was an accident. Nothing more. To suggest anything different would only fan the flames of his anger, unleash the full torrent of his scorn and ridicule. No useful purpose could be served in confiding her thoughts and feelings to Bill. Not now or ever. Her fears for Ivy’s safety - for her life - would be her own private business.

She deliberately put from her mind all thoughts of Bill and, against the backdrop of his innocuous ramblings, plunged into the total consideration of the decision she must make before morning.

He noticed her absence and said harshly, ‘Where the hell are you anyway?’

His comment startled her. ‘What?’

‘Up flittin’ about with the spooks and goblins?’

There was an ugly twist to his grin. He drained his glass and ordered another. Janice’s failure to answer further intrigued him.

‘I suppose you agree with Reverend Mother?’ And without waiting for her reply, added: ‘Well, it doesn’t matter who you agree with or what you think. Hoover’s had it. That little display in the courtroom this afternoon was their full salvo, and it didn’t mean a goddamn thing. Velie said they’ve run out of witnesses. They’ve no place to go but us.’ He chuckled with grim pleasure. ‘Nobody left but us chickens. Unless they decide to put on Hoover or fly in some other gooney bird from Timbuktu.’ This idea made him laugh. ‘Gunga Din,’ he said, rounding out the thought. His drink came. He drank it while he settled the bill.

Nothing more was said until the drive south on the Merritt Parkway. It was a cold ride since the car heater was faulty, a fact which had a decidedly sobering effect on Bill.

As they approached the Henry Hudson Parkway, he said without rancour, ‘We should do something for Mr Calitri - to show our appreciation. A nice gift or a cheque.’

Janice agreed.

Later, walking home from the Hertz garage, the two of them bent into the chill January wind which bore against them, he shouted to her, ‘I’d ask Harold Yates to look into a possible lawsuit for incompetence or negligence, but how the fuck do you sue the Catholic Church?’

It was near midnight when they entered the apartment.

Bill took a cold beer out of the refrigerator and poured himself a double bourbon. He seemed distant and sulky again and carried the drinks unsteadily to the staircase, where he paused. After some trouble balancing his nightcap, he managed to flick on the light switch with his elbow, illuminating the upstairs hallway. Before ascending, he stepped aside to allow Janice to precede him.

‘Coming to bed?’

Janice said cautiously, ‘In a while.’

He nodded sagely and with infinite wisdom. ‘Good night,’ he said, and raised his shot glass in a toast. ‘Pleasant dreams.’

His scorn of her fears, which he had easily fathomed, was definitive, as was his amusement at her cowardice in expressing them.

Janice watched him ascend the stairs with a dazed stillness -not for his taunting ridicule of her, but for the barrier he had erected between them which now separated them irrevocably.

By one forty-five the apartment was silent.

Sitting in the rocker, Janice’s expression was calm except for two pinched lines at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes traversed the living-room - the only real world she ever knew and loved: the white stuccoed walls that encompassed it, the darkly stained pegged floor that supported it, the glorious ceiling that crowned it. She lingered over each cherished part of it, each pillow and piece of furniture, each painting, lamp, and oddment of bric-a-brac, each item invested with a sweet and gentle memory of a shared, beloved moment in their lives.

A sudden panic gripped her at the thought of all she was risking. She’d lose him. She’d surely lose Bill. She’d lose it all. His love. Their marriage. Their perfect life in their perfect apartment. She felt faint at the thought, and her senses battled against the reality of a life without Bill - a life alone - one more member of that vast unloved, unwanted set, poking about on the fringes of other people’s lives, outside looking in.

Her eyes filled with tears. She wiped them away with her hand and focused her blurred vision down at the worn and scuffed leather cover of the diary resting on her lap.

Hoover’s diary.

She had taken it down from the closet for a reason - a reason that seemed urgent at the time, but that now was vague and incomprehensible.

Why had she taken it down? Was it simply an exercise to while away the sleepless hours ahead? Her need for a companion, a hand to hold through the dark and waiting night?

Or - her face grew stark - were there still things she had to know about this man before she could take her awesome step? All the scraps and pieces of his past, his thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams, the deep and intimate confidences that lovers convey to each other during courtship.

Yes. That was it - reaching for the diary was a further step in their courtship. A further getting to know the man to whom she was about to consign her family’s future.

Her trembling fingers sought the centre page of the bulging diary, and pulling it open, she found herself in a section crammed with small, what seemed to be hieroglyphics - tiny pencil scrawlings in a language that was probably Hindi or Sanskrit. Page after page was filled with these writings; strange, nubby intense words that, although incomprehensible, purveyed a sense of deep passion in their very design and outpouring. The pages continued in this vein until Janice wondered if the tragedy of Prana and her family and Hoover’s loss of faith in the aftermath of their deaths had not caused him to forsake the English language entirely. And then, turning a page, she was startled to see a paragraph written in the same chatty, informational Baedeker-English she remembered reading in the earlier part of the diary.

I am in Mysore. I want to be here because it has been inhabited, I understand, as long as any place on earth. It is the size of New England, which seems almost nonexistent to me now. Are we really all under the same sky?

Good roads. Hotels with formal gardens and fountains. Palaces across the river. But I am looking for animals and trees, not temples. Let me see if there is any majesty inside me.

The next two pages were in Sanskrit, followed by a page in English.

Village life. Get me out of here. I see the same sweet women filling water jugs at the central fountain and the men, once again with their simple dignity as they move with the buffalo and the ploughs. Thousands of years old. The huts are skimpier than I am used to, and all the beds are outside. I never used to look at something and visualize catastrophe at the same time. But all I can think of is monsoon. Son of a bitch. In Benares I thought I was testing India. The sky opened; the tables turned. India tested me.