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'If I'm not needed here,' Annabel confirmed. She'd bought her ticket several weeks earlier and had arranged to be seated at the same table as Harry and his wife and a group of doctors and their partners from the paediatric side of the hospital. 'Daisy, I'm worried about your blood oxygen readings. Your levels are still dropping too much when we take you off the oxygen.'

'You think it's time for home oxygen.'

'As a trial to start,' Annabel admitted gently. The point was more that Daisy wasn't well enough to leave St Peter's without oxygen. In the past they'd discussed the possibility of home oxygen therapy in an abstract way, but the time had come to talk specifics. 'I'd like our technician to visit your flat and arrange for it to start.'

'Not for twenty-four hours,' Daisy said huskily. 'Dr Stuart, I know you're only doing what's best for me but I couldn't bear—'

'When you're home in the evenings and mornings and overnight,' Annabel interrupted. The oxygen cylinder would be mounted on a trolley, allowing some degree of mobility, and for up to eight hours maximum per day she could be without it. 'If you're going out in the evenings you can compensate by wearing it for the same time during the day instead.'

'If it has to be, it has to be.' Daisy's tremulous smile just about broke Annabel's heart. 'I suppose at least that way I'll look pink and healthy for the dinner tomorrow. I won't have to worry about scaring off the paying guests.'

'You'd hardly do that,' Annabel said quietly. 'Half the people on the guest list are probably only coming to see you.'

'I may have been a teeny bit forceful in my invitations,' Daisy conceded gravely, although the twinkle was back in her eyes now. 'But it's for a good cause.'

'A very good one,' Annabel agreed.

Daisy smiled. 'That's a nice dress, Dr Stuart. I haven't seen you in anything as feminine as that before. It suits you. Will you be wearing something like that tomorrow night?'

Annabel, blinking a little at Daisy's abrupt change of subject, looked down at herself and smoothed a silky pleat over her knees. 'I haven't thought about it,' she admitted. People tended to dress fairly formally for these sorts of occasions and she had a couple of suitable outfits but she hadn't had time to consider which she'd wear yet.

'You should.' Daisy nodded. 'That style suits you.'

With Daisy's comment in mind, Annabel went to more effort than she would have usually for the dinner. She took a few hours off on Saturday afternoon and for the first time in more than a year she went clothes-shopping. The emerald sleeveless dress she eventually chose scooped at the neck into a narrow bodice and waist then flared in two pleats over her hips to just below her knees.

The neckline hadn't looked immodest in the store but it was lower than she was used to and she felt a little self-conscious, but a quick glance around the crowd when she arrived at the hotel soothed her anxiety that she might stand out because there were women in all sorts of outfits from short cocktail frocks to long, formal ballgowns.

She spotted Harry and his wife Evelyn at the far side of the foyer and began making her way slowly in their direction, smiling and nodding and exchanging greetings with familiar faces as she moved.

'Annabel, you look absolutely lovely.' Evelyn kissed her cheek when she reached them. 'You've bought a new dress. Harry, don't just stand there with your mouth open. Tell Annabel she looks lovely.'

'Always does,' Harry said gallantly, adjusting his bow-tie.

Annabel, flushing slightly, thanked them both and complimented Evelyn on her own beautiful dress. 'Quite a gathering, isn't it? I don't think I've ever seen such a good turn-out. I don't see too many people I recognise. Have you seen Daisy, Harry?'

'Looking radiant and clinging to her young man,' Harry told her with a chuckle.

Only Daisy could look radiant with a blood oxygen pressure as low as hers was, Annabel acknowledged ruefully. 'I might go and have a peek at her,' she told the couple. Because she'd known the occasion was so important to Daisy she hadn't had the heart to insist she spend the evening instead in her bed at St Peter's, but inwardly she hadn't been relaxed about releasing her.

The crowd had gathered in the foyer and mezzanine level of the hotel around the balconies, and there were only a few couples in the ballroom on the first floor where the last of the tables were still being set up by hotel staff. Annabel spotted Daisy, sitting with her boyfriend at an otherwise empty table at the far side of the hall. Their backs were to her, but when she walked closer, wanting to get a closer look at Daisy's skin colour, she felt an arm curl around hers and she whirled around to confront Luke.

'Leave her,' he ordered quietly.

'Why?' She stared up at him, her senses reacting to the devastating sight of her ex-husband in a dinner jacket. 'I didn't know you were coming,' she added jerkily. 'Harry never , mentioned it. Where are you sitting? Not with us, I shouldn't think. Our table's full.' Not giving him a chance to answer, she tugged at his arm, wanting him to release her. 'I have to see Daisy. Her blood oxygen level this afternoon was terrible—'

'Leave her for now,' Luke said more forcefully. 'Give them space. I was checking the microphone over there a few minutes ago and I think I overheard him getting ready to propose.'

'John?'
Annabel's mouth dried. She whirled quickly and saw the couple still bent closely together then turned back to Luke. 'Oh, the poor man,' she said faintly. 'He doesn't realise she's dying.'

'Or perhaps he does,' Luke murmured.

Annabel felt tears prickle behind her eyes. She let her evening bag slide off her shoulder and started to open it to find a tissue, but Luke offered her a white handkerchief, slid a warm arm around her back and guided her through a side door into a deserted hotel corridor.

'Thanks.' Annabel dabbed her eyes and drew in a shuddering breath. 'Actually, I don't know how much she's told him,' she said weakly. 'Probably, knowing Daisy, not much. He knows she's waiting for a transplant, of course, but I doubt if he understands how urgently she needs it.'

'It might not change anything if he does.' Luke rubbed the pad of his thumb across her moist cheek. 'He's in love. He wants to be with her every minute he still can be.'

'That's curiously romantic, coming from you.' Annabel wiped her cheek again where he'd touched her, but this time with his handkerchief. 'How do you know about feelings like that?'

He took the handkerchief out of her hands and rubbed gently at a space she must have missed. 'Is it so inconceivable I could have felt that way about you?'

'You never wanted to be with me every minute. You wanted an hour, now and then, for sex, but outside that you wouldn't have cared.'

'They were demanding years,' he countered. 'For both of us. There were times when I wanted you and you weren't there for me either. Times when you slept at the hospital rather than come home to me.'

'The difference is that I'd have come if you'd asked.' Her tears dried now, she rested back against the cool wall of the corridor and closed her eyes. 'I would have done anything for you.'

'Liar.' His face was bleak. 'I asked you to come to Boston.'

'That old thing.' Annabel lowered her head. 'You'll simmer about that for ever won't you? Well, you shouldn't have tried to bully me. If you'd asked me nicely I'd have gone to the moon with you, Luke. And if the job was that important to you, why didn't you just leave me then and go right away when they first asked you?'

'You were my wife,' he said flatly, as if that was all the answer she needed. 'You're not seriously saying you didn't come because I didn't put it to you politely enough? Annabel, you knew how important that position was to me.'

'I wanted to be more important.'

'You
were
more important. I stayed, didn't I?'

'Reluctantly and resentfully.'

'There were things I wanted to achieve in my professional life,' he said grimly. 'Until you, I'd worked hard and single-mindedly for them. I didn't expect to have to delay that progress and, you're right, I did find that frustrating. But when I'd least wanted to I'd fallen in love, and more than anything else in the world I wanted to make you happy. I'm sorry that I didn't find it as easy to put aside my professional aspirations as I should have. I'm sorry that you and our marriage suffered for my ambivalence, but in the end I did what I thought was right.'

'By which you mean, put the job on hold temporarily, hang around until life gets tedious, then dump me and make a quick escape,' she summarised. 'Thanks very much, Luke. You did me a real favour.'

'The greatest favour I did you was leaving. You were a gifted, talented doctor and suddenly you were talking about leaving hospital medicine for general practice or even giving up altogether,' he said accusingly. 'If I'd stayed you'd have thrown away your career.'

'To have your child.'

'We had years ahead of us for children,' he said dismissively. 'You've still time ahead of you now if you wanted to delay. There was never any rush. And you love your job, don't you? When I asked you about regrets this week you admitted you had none.'

'You're trying to judge me by your own standards but they don't apply to me,' she protested. 'If what you want is belated thanks for rescuing me from a life of tedious domesticity, Luke, then I'm sorry—you're out of luck. I do love my job, I adore it, but I'd have found a little part-time general practice, combined with raising children, just as, if not more, rewarding. I never wanted "the big career".' She put the last three words in quotes by wiggling her fingers in the air. 'You're the only one who rated your career more important than a family or me.'

Luke's gaze narrowed down to her face. 'You just can't leave it alone, can you, Annie? It's impossible to have a conversation, without you bringing my failings back into it somewhere. Why did you have to see my work as competition to you?'

'Because I was
sick
with jealousy,' she said baldly, glaring up at him. '
Sick
with it. I wanted you just once to want me as much as you wanted to get ahead in your job.' She averted her eyes from his suddenly thoughtful expression and turned away from him. 'We'd better go back. I can hear people gathering.'

Annabel looked for Daisy as she made her way to where she could see Harry and his wife already seated at their table, but the younger woman didn't seem to be about anywhere, although she tapped Annabel on her shoulder a few minutes later at the table as people were beginning to settle into their seats.

'The dress is perfect, Dr Stuart. You look amazing.'

'How are you feeling?' Annabel looked up searchingly. Behind Daisy's smile her face was pale and her eyes red, and John, standing behind her, looked tense and strained, his eyes, too, suspiciously swollen.

'Oh, you can forget me. You're not at work now.' She bent and spoke close to Annabel's ear. 'I've got a surprise for you,' she murmured. 'I organised the tables and guess which gorgeous professor's going to be sitting next to you tonight? You will make the most of it, won't you, Dr Stuart? I really think he likes you.'

Annabel looked up. Luke had been waylaid, after returning to the room, by one of Daisy's fellow fund-raising committee members, but the chair next to hers was the only conspicuously vacant one she could see now in the entire room. 'Daisy,' she warned, 'don't even begin to waste your time thinking about it.'

'I asked him,' Daisy whispered. 'He's not married. He isn't even seeing anyone at the moment.'

'You're a menace,' Annabel said weakly.

'Be nice to him just for me.' Dimpling, Daisy put her hand into the crook of John's elbow and the couple moved away towards the next table.

There was a flurry of greetings when Luke reached the table, and Annabel realised from Harry's bland welcome that she was probably the only one who hadn't been expecting him.

Buying a book of raffle tickets from one of the circulating sellers took a few minutes, then she turned to Harry beside her. Luke was occupied in conversation with doctors she recognised from the Harefield Hospital, a specialist heart and chest hospital in Middlesex, who'd come up to introduce themselves to him. 'I thought Martin Briggs was going to be here,' she whispered to Harry. The senior paediatric cardiologist at St Peter's, the man she'd expected to find herself seated next to, had been scheduled as the star after-dinner speaker for the evening.

'Came down with viral vestibulitis on Wednesday,' Harry explained, referring to an ear condition which could cause dramatic dizziness. 'Young Daisy Miller immediately invited Luke and happily he agreed to step in and speak at the last minute.' Harry beamed. He patted his stomach in a satisfied way. 'Sold another dozen tables in half a day once word got around,' he said smugly. 'That's why we're in the ballroom instead of down in the restaurant. There're even journalists here tonight. We might get some good publicity out of this.'

Their first courses were delivered during a brief welcoming speech by the master of ceremonies for the evening, one of the medical scientists from St Peter's. There were two choices, delivered alternately around the table, and despite her tenseness at Luke's proximity Annabel enjoyed her asparagus. When the main courses were delivered she was given steak with a wild mushroom sauce, but before she could decide what she was going to do about that Luke, still deep in discussion with the paediatrician on his other side, smoothly and wordlessly swapped her meal for his poached salmon.

'I've never understood why you ladies prefer fish to meat,' Harry pronounced, beaming at Annabel, having just performed a similar meal swap with his wife. 'Can you not see, Annabel, that there's no greater culinary treat than a nicely cooked piece of Scottish beef like this?'

'I'm sure it's lovely but if I eat mushrooms I'm risking anaphylaxis,' Annabel explained. 'I'm allergic to them,' she added quickly, seeing Evelyn's puzzlement at the medical term. 'My face and neck swell up and I get wheezy and covered in a rash. I've been like that since childhood. It's years since I've tried a mushroom but I won't ever be brave enough to go near one again.'