Body Politic by J.M. Gregson Page A

sorry.’
    She didn’t say any more. Neither of them needed more. He held on to her hands for a full minute, in what he felt now would be the last intimate contact he would ever have with the woman he loved. He did not want explanations. Yet he was driven into words, as much to break the spell of this exquisitely painful silence as in search of explanation. ‘It’s him, isn’t it? Keane!’ He spat the name harshly, as if it were an obscenity.
    She snatched her hands away at that, as he felt he had known she would. Her eyes stared out at the twilight, her profile turned to marble. He felt her seeping away from him as she said, ‘It may be. I don’t know. I think I’m almost rid of him, now. But I can’t live with you, Gerry. I’m sorry.’
    The words hit him like a bludgeoning with a sand-filled sock. He stood up unsteadily, surprised that he had enough control of his limbs to move in a normal fashion. ‘I’m sorry, too, Moira. Perhaps ... Well, perhaps when ...’
    He could not go on. He wanted to say that perhaps when she was better things might be different, but he could not face the certainty of the renewed denial that would bring. He said clumsily, ‘I think I’d better be off now,’ unable to frame a decent excuse for an abrupt departure. He knew that Dermot would be away for an hour at least yet, but he needed to be out of this claustrophobic house, away from the woman he loved before she could retreat even further from him. She did not come to the door with him, and he did not look back for the face he knew would not be there.
    That night, fury welled within Gerald Sangster, surging over and drowning the pain of his rejection by Moira. It was not her face which was framed by his anger, but the confident, urbane countenance of the man who had rejected her, who had cast her into this illness which Gerald now felt was the source of all his pain and frustration.
    Raymond Keane had suffered nothing for what he had done to his lovely Moira. He had installed that new blonde woman already in her place. And his political career was going from strength to strength. Well, he couldn’t be allowed to get away with it. He wasn’t the only enterprising and determined man in Moira’s life. Gerry had built his own prosperous business, and he had the resources and determination to bring Keane down, if he put his mind to it.
    It was the only service he could render now to Moira. The only one she would allow him to make. He would not fail her. He had no idea yet what he would do.
    But he would make sure her revenge upon Keane was swift and effective.
    *
    Gerald Sangster would have been surprised at what was happening to the blonde woman he had last seen on Keane’s arm.
    Even as Sangster began to formulate his action against Keane, Zoe Renwick was reviewing her relationship with the MP. She had had a trying day as ward sister. There was sickness among the staff as flu began to make its winter rounds. There had been a little spat between two normally quiet nurses about the duty rotas for Christmas and New Year. For the first time in her experience, the notion that parents of small children were given priority in Christmas leave had been challenged, and she had been called upon to adjudicate.
    In the afternoon, there had been a death—an expected one, but one which tore at the emotions none the less for that. Death in the smaller, more intimate world of a private hospital shattered those close to it more than that inevitable event did in the large and busy wards of the National Health Service. The grieving relatives, even with their breathy, well-meant thanks to those who had nursed the departed through these last days, made an unavoidable impact on the other patients in this quiet, contained world.
    By the time she got back to her flat in the evening, Zoe was quite exhausted. Her mind came back again, as it did in every spare moment, to that curious gathering on Sunday, when Moira Yates, flanked by her brother and her