‘A priest came to see me when I was in the hospital,’ he tells her. ‘He said despair was a sin. That turning your back on life was turning away from God.’

‘I don’t believe in God,’ she answers simply, and she is pleased to see the amusement that enters his eye.

‘But you did once.’

‘I suppose I did.’

‘So what changed?’

His voice is soft, measured, but his eye holds her with a look of clear enquiry.

She shifts in her seat. ‘I grew up. Started thinking for myself.’

‘So you matured and shrugged off the indoctrination,’ he remarks, in a way that sounds sceptical. ‘It wasn’t something that happened to you – some dire circumstance that shook your faith?’

The patient stare – a knowingness to it. She feels the inward squirm, and sips her tea, feels the warm surface of it against her teeth.

‘Never cared much for priests myself,’ he remarks, looking away now. ‘Until my stay in the hotel.’

Released from his gaze, she can breathe again. ‘The hotel?’

He grins, as if he’s made a little joke.

‘The Grand State Hotel. The finest hospitality the Republic has to offer to her most penitent citizens.’

‘You mean prison.’

‘I prefer to think of it as the hotel.’ He crosses his legs. ‘The chaplain there was a decent sort. We became friends, I suppose.’

She doesn’t know what to say to him. So many questions crowd her thoughts, but shyness and insecurity hold her back.

‘He used to tell me I must make my peace with Charlotte, and with God, before I died,’ Anton says, ‘for it would be too late afterwards and I would regret it for eternity.’ A puff of laughter escapes his nose. ‘I thought it was nonsense. But …’

He looks at her now.

‘When I was in the ambulance that night, when I looked across and saw you there, I thought … I thought I had died already, and that Charlotte was with me.’

‘And what would you have said to her?’ Leah asks.

His eyes cloud with consternation. ‘I don’t know,’ he tells her.

The garden around them swells with lush summer greenness. Inside her womb, a baby is growing. How strange it is to be discussing the dead in the midst of all this life.

‘Perhaps,’ she tries, ‘you might have said sorry.’

A brief flash of surprise in his face, before it dissolves into something flatter, harder. ‘Yes,’ he agrees. ‘I would have said sorry. But not for what you think I should.’

His eyes slide away from her, his expression changing as he straightens in his chair, smooths down the front of his dressing-gown.

‘Evening,’ he says, and Leah turns to see Jake standing in the shadows of the patio, silently removing his cycling gloves, his face unreadable.

‘You on the mend, then?’ Jake asks, making no attempt to come and join them.