‘Shall I get a drink? There was that machine.’

‘If you want.’

‘Do you?’

‘No.’

In the end, she just got them a paper cup of water each.

‘What time is it?’

‘I don’t wear a watch. Have you forgotten that I don’t wear a watch? There’s a clock on the wall behind you.’

They both turned and looked at the clock.

‘Ten past ten.’

‘Oh my God, I haven’t rung Madison.’

‘Why do you have to ring her? This has nothing to do with her.’

‘She’ll wonder where I am, she’ll want to know what time I’ll be back, she’s on her own with the twins.’

Now Greta stared. What Jeff had said made no sense.

‘Oh God.’

‘They would come and tell us, wouldn’t they, if she . . . they wouldn’t just . . .’

‘Of course they would.’

The door opened and a doctor came in, a doctor wearing thick glasses and an expression of wariness, exhaustion, distress, a face that did not beam good news.

‘Mr and Mrs Tonks?’

‘No. Yes.’

He blinked. ‘I’m sorry, I thought . . .’

‘I am Jeff Tonks, this is Greta Tonks. We’re not Mr and Mrs Tonks, we –’

‘We’re Olivia’s parents.’

‘Right. I see.’

He looked at the arrangement of chairs, hesitated, pulled one over to face them, looked at it, at them.

‘I’m Matthew Green, I’m the neurological consultant in charge of Olivia’s case.’

Not Olivia, Greta thought, Olivia’s ‘case’ or the case that was Olivia. She was a ‘case’.

He wore a lanyard with his photograph and name on it.

‘What’s happening? What’s going to happen to her? I know she’s going to be all right, they got to her in time, I know, they saved her life, the helicopter was very quick, but what happens now? Where will she be? How long will it be? What –’

‘Shut up, Greta.’

An alarm bell, a fire alarm, an emergency alarm, screeched outside.

‘It’s OK,’ Dr Green said. What was?

‘So . . . who was it found Olivia? One of you?’

‘Yes. I’m her mother. She lives with me.’

‘OK.’ He looked embarrassed. He pulled his pager out and checked it, though it had not made a sound. ‘Right. Have you any idea how long it was that she’d been hanging there? Even approximately, a rough guess?’

‘I don’t know. I was out. I wasn’t there. How would I know?’

Could he not tell? Why didn’t he tell them, not the other way round?

‘It can’t have been very long,’ Greta said, ‘because . . . I know she wouldn’t have been home more than . . . but she was alive, wasn’t she, she was breathing when they arrived?’

‘Mr and Mrs . . . The thing is, when the paramedics first checked her, she wasn’t breathing, no, but she did have a pulse.’

‘So she was alive.’