I like her, Cat thought, but I can’t always read her, and especially now. She had been good for Sam, settling and focusing him, helping him to grow up a bit, but where they were, let alone where they might be heading, it was impossible to tell. And they were very young. Too young.

Her phone beeped with a voice message.

‘This is Sister Daly on Osler Ward, Bevham General, for Dr Deerbon. It’s about your patient, Mr Lionel Brown. He keeps asking to see you. He doesn’t seem to have any family and he’s quite distressed, so if there’s any chance you could pop over, I think it would help.’

It was Cat’s long weekend off. She had an afternoon of batch cooking and baking ahead after doing the jobs in town, with a choir practice that evening, and she needed to finish her book group choice before they met on Monday. Kieron was collecting Felix from Saturday-morning school. It was the sort of domestic day she loved. But now, there was Lionel Brown. Concierge Medical did not usually visit patients in hospital – no GP did, partly because the hospitals did not like it and preferred to get on with their side of the job, so the fact that Lionel’s repeated request to see her had prompted the ward sister to ring was significant.

A section of the bypass was bring resurfaced and under temporary traffic-light control, and a sudden hailstorm had already slowed everything down, so that the quick trip to Bevham General took Cat forty-five minutes. The supermarket run would have to wait.

He was in a four-bed ward off a larger one, where the level of noise should not have been tolerated. Visitors milled about, talking and laughing loudly, two small children raced about unrestrained, trolleys screeched. There was the usual smell of stew and antiseptic. Since when had any hospital ward been allowed to turn into bedlam?

One of the beds in Lionel’s bay had the curtains drawn round; in the next, a tiny, ancient, waxen figure was deeply asleep and snoring. The third bed was vacant. He was beside the window but the view was of the adjacent building’s concrete wall.

He had shrunk down into himself and was thinner, his skin was grey and he had the inward-looking expression Cat had often seen on the faces of very old people who had lost all interest in the life around them. His eyes were half closed and he was lolling forward, the pillows slipping down the bed frame on which he was propped. She put her hand on his.

‘Hello, Mr Brown . . . Lionel?’

No response.