He looked, in the feeble light that struggled through the curtains, at her sandy-gold hair falling in tangles on the pillow and her thin shoulder, turned against him, rising and falling under the white lace of her night-dress with the rhythm of her breathing. They’d each been up twice in the night to check on Alice. He’d only slept shallowly, troubled by images of McGillivray in his cell and imagining himself taunted by a gang of children chanting ‘Traitor! Traitor!’ at him. Margaret sighed gently and shifted her body slightly, pulling the bedclothes around her. Have I made myself a stranger to her, he thought? I’m lying here in an inner agony that I can’t tell her about. It’s not fair on her to make her bear my troubles when she’s still not as strong as she should be and when she’s been wracked with worry about Alice. He thought about Antonia. Just a few weeks ago he could have confided in her, as he had for years since Helen’s death, but something had changed. It wasn’t just Antonia’s coldness when he’d last seen her.
