The kitchen table was covered in paperwork, boxes of files, receipts piled high, invoices spilling over balance sheets. Schrödinger sat on one of the piles licking a paw and making a soft sound in his throat. Outside, long shadows splayed over the links, dappling people heading home or to bars in town, a handful of souls knocking golf balls around the pitch and putt.

Dorothy sipped her whisky and sighed. On the one hand, she was glad the company never went digital, she barely knew how to switch a computer on. On the other hand there was this mess of files going back decades, connected by some Byzantine system only Jim understood. Maybe that was deliberate, she thought, then hated herself for thinking it.

There was a knock on the open door and Archie stood there looking worried.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Hey.’ He gazed at the chaos in front of her. ‘What’s this?’

‘Join me for a drink,’ Dorothy said, lifting her glass.

Archie looked uncomfortable. ‘I shouldn’t, my medication.’

‘Just one,’ Dorothy said. ‘I need the company.’

Archie hesitated then sat down, as Dorothy got him a glass and poured a couple of fingers of Highland Park.

Archie sipped and sat, staring into his glass, the amber swirl of it.

‘So, what are you up to?’ he said eventually.

Dorothy waited until he looked up, tried to gauge something from his eyes or the way he spoke. Imagine having the superpower of knowing what someone else was thinking, what a terrifying prospect. And yet don’t we all try to feel what it’s like to be someone else, otherwise we turn into sociopaths?

‘How’s everything going,’ Dorothy said. ‘With the Cotard’s, I mean.’

Archie shrugged. ‘OK.’204

‘Anything you want to talk about?’

He shook his head and gripped his glass.

Dorothy put a hand on his arm. ‘You would tell me if you were struggling?’

He looked up and held her gaze, like a challenge. ‘Yes.’

‘I often wonder what it’s like.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘The syndrome. Do you mind talking about it?’

Archie scratched his beard. ‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Dorothy, you saved me. You can talk about anything you like.’

‘I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.’

Archie waved that away. ‘It’s fine.’

Dorothy lifted a piece of paper from the table, an invoice for renovation work done to the embalming room back in 2009. An expansion plus an improved air-conditioning unit after the unusually warm summer.

‘I think recently,’ she said, ‘I’ve had an idea what it must’ve been like for you.’

‘How do you mean?’

Dorothy ran her thumb along her fingernails. ‘I don’t mean to sound flippant about your condition, but I’ve felt pretty dead, since Jim.’

Archie considered his whisky but didn’t drink. ‘It’s not about feeling dead.’

‘I know.’