Tempted by Dr Morales. Carol Marinelli

up and tears fill Juan’s grey eyes.

      ‘I…’ He didn’t want to let it out, he had held it all in and he wanted to keep doing so. There was young Eduard in the next bed. He’d only been here for three days and Juan didn’t want to scare him—Juan had been trying to cheer him up today.

      He just couldn’t hold it in any more.

      The sob that came out was primal, from a place he had never been.

      ‘Good man,’ Manuel said.

      Juan lay there sobbing as Manuel wiped his eyes and blew his nose. He was in hell and humiliated and scared and everything he’d tried not to be.

      ‘Good man,’ Manuel said, over and over.

      He’d been a good man, Juan thought. He’d done everything right, everything had been in place—an amazing career, a loving fiancée. He had been a good man.

      ‘No more…’ Juan said, incoherent almost as he sobbed.

      But there was more and tonight he let it out.

      Graciela stood there and wiped Eduard’s tears as they glimpsed for the first time Juan’s desolation and rage, and she swallowed a couple of tears of her own.

      All Juan’s roommates cried quietly along with him. Two had been there before, giving in to the grief and the fear in the still of the night, and Eduard soon would. There was no privacy in their worlds right now and all the men had heard the painful exchange between Juan and Martina.

      All were with Juan as finally he gave in and wept.

      No one was with him, though, when, eighteen months later, Juan woke up in a foreign country, feeling the desolation all over again.

       CHAPTER FIVE

      ‘HOW HAS YOUR week been?’

      Cate stopped for a brief chat with her neighbour as both women headed for work. Bridgette and her husband James were both in the police. It was nice being neighbours with fellow shift workers and, over the summer, Bridgette and Cate had spent several afternoons lying in one or the other’s garden and putting the world to rights.