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‘Mrs Cooper?’

Sandra stood up.

‘Come with me. I’m Jazz. I’ll get you prepped for the procedure. It’s quite straightforward. We’ll pop a line in for the sedative and get you settled to wait for the doctor.’

Jazz took her into a room and indicated that she should lie on the bed. She took her hand and rubbed the skin until she had found a vein. Then she inserted a needle and taped it down.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘All ready. I’ll be back in a moment.’

She left the room. Sandra reached for her phone and checked her messages. Maybe Martin had figured out what was going on and was on his way.

Nothing.

Jazz came back into the room. ‘We’re ready. I’ll take you down.’ She pulled the bed through the door and pushed it down the corridor. Sandra felt like saying she could walk, but she lay back.

Maybe this is the future, she thought. If something’s wrong. Being pushed around in hospital beds.

Which was a charm against it being wrong. If she accepted it was possible then it wouldn’t happen. That was the opposite of what she had done when Maggie disappeared. Then she had thought, This can’t be happening to me, she’ll come back. It had taken days for her to accept that something serious really had happened. Maybe if she’d thought that immediately, Maggie would have been OK.

Jazz pushed the bed into a room full of screens and monitors. A doctor followed her in. She was in her fifties and had short bottle-blonde hair.

‘I’m Dr Green.’ She consulted a computer screen. ‘You’ve had gas and bloating. Some weight loss. Blood in stool.’ She looked at Sandra. ‘Any pain?’

‘Not really. Nothing too bad.’

‘Not really? Or not too bad?’

‘Not really.’

‘OK. Let’s take a look.’

Jazz put an arm on her shoulder. ‘I’m going to give you some sedative now. You’ll probably feel tired. Go to sleep if you like. Or you can watch the show.’ She pointed at a screen. ‘It’ll all be up there.’

Sandra looked up.

‘I think I’ll try and watch,’ she said.

7

She came around in the examining room.

She’d been planning to watch the procedure, but the voices had gradually faded and her vision had dimmed as the sedative took effect. She still felt a bit woozy; it was no wonder the hospital insisted you take a taxi or get a lift home. There was no way she should be driving.

The door opened and Jazz came in. She put a cup of tea and a packet of bourbon biscuits on the table next to Sandra.

‘There you go. Take your time. Dr Green will be along to talk to you in a few minutes. She wants to discuss the results of the colonoscopy with you.’

‘OK. Thank you.’

‘Not a problem. Enjoy your tea.’

Sandra felt a small frisson of anxiety. Did the doctor want to talk to her because something was wrong? Or did she talk to all her patients? Maybe if you managed to stay awake you heard what she had to say during the procedure and it was only the patients who went to sleep who needed a special visit.

She sipped the tea. She felt its warmth spread through her body. She opened the packet of biscuits and took a large bite. God, it was good to get something inside her stomach.

There was a knock on the door. It scraped on the floor as it opened. Dr Green came in and sat on the chair opposite her.

‘So,’ she said. ‘How are you feeling?’