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clear that we have no need of towels.
    ‘L’eau était froide ?’ With no clues as to her nationality, I choose the courteous option. She fails to respond, and it is not until she puts on her clothes that I realise her plain grey dress is a habit and her mind will be full of God. Twenty years after leaving school, I still expect nuns to be old.
    Each of the women takes her turn to go through to the bath until finally it is mine. I shiver so violently at the prospect of the glacial water that they must think I have come to be cured of a tremor. The attendant leads me into a small granite-lined room with a tub like an outsize hip bath at the centre. The air is damp with a metallic tang, and a layer of condensation lines the walls. I am welcomed by two more attendants wearing light plastic aprons.
    ‘English?’ one of them asks.
    ‘Yes,’ I say, wondering if it is the Marks and Spencer pants that give me away.
    She nods at her companion, who tells me in a soft Scottish burr to remove my underwear and place it on the shelf. She then holds up a small piece of wet linen, wrapping it around me like a sarong and tying it loosely at the back. Taking my arm, she guides me into the bath and down its three inner steps. The water is so biting that it feels like treading in a tub of broken glass. With her companion holding my other arm, she instructs me to sit. I lower my bottom gingerly into the arctic depths.
    ‘No, no, bend your knees as if you’re on a stool!’ I do so, pressingheavily on their arms and leaving my bottom suspended. ‘Now you must make your intentions.’
    This is the moment of truth: the moment when I am planning to ask St Bernadette to intercede for Richard, to give me back the man I loved, the man I married, or, at the very least, the man. She herself said that the water of Lourdes had no power without faith. Well, mine is a faith that has never faltered even at the bleakest prognosis. This is the chance for it to reap its reward. Or is the clear-cut faith of my catechism irredeemably muddied by desire?
    I look into my heart and wish that I saw nothing. I pray for Richard’s recovery as intently as ever, but my motives are no longer pure. Should a miracle occur and he regain the forty years he has lost during the last twelve, my Te Deums would ring across the Pyrenees, but I fear that, even then, St Bernadette would find them wanting. Knowing that he no longer depended on me, would I at last be able to leave him with a clear conscience, or would I feel obliged to stay out of gratitude for my deliverance?
    The water is still but I feel it swirling around me. The Scots attendant recites the Hail Mary and, fixing my gaze on the statuette of the Virgin directly in front of me, I strive to drain my mind of everything but her compassion. Although she lived more than eighteen hundred years before Bernadette, her experience and understanding feel so much closer. I cannot believe that, having followed her son to Calvary, she would endorse Patricia’s ‘We all have our crosses to bear,’ or that, given Christ’s gospel of love, she would condemn my love for Vincent.
    Or is that sheer self-deception, more contemptible than ever in this sacred place?
    A chill spreads through me from somewhere beyond the water. I realise that I am agonizing over questions that have already been answered. How typical that I should be so fixated on the mystery of the baths that I have ignored the message of the courtyard! How typical that God should speak to me not through the Virgin or St Bernadette but through a nameless Dutch woman in a queue! Her selfless devotion has shown me the true meaning of love. I feel faint and am afraid of sinking, but the attendants have me in their grip. It is clear that I can never leave Richard. It would be hard enough tojustify in Bath, let alone in Lourdes. I shall speak to Vincent at once and without apology. If he asks for reasons, I shall cite my original ones for coming. The rest has just been