‘Hi, baby,’ said Hunter, stepping on to the terrace, carrying two glasses. ‘Emile just made this juice for us. It’s got kale and beetroot and flax oil – I can’t remember all the ingredients, but it’s a super-food cluster-fuck that means we’re going to have to face up to our immortality.’

‘“The woods decay, the woods decay and fall … Me only cruel immortality consumes,”’ Lucy quoted wearily.

‘Hang on, I’m having one too. This is an immortality pact.’

‘Farewell, cruel death!’ said Lucy, taking the drink with a smile.

‘So, what’s happened in the agonising hour of separation since I last saw you?’ asked Hunter.

‘Well, Olivia told me she was pregnant.’

‘No kidding,’ said Hunter.

‘Funny you should use that phrase,’ said Lucy in an astute German accent.

‘Okay, so they’re kidding,’ said Hunter, ‘but are they serious? It’s unplanned – I assume.’

‘Yes, but not necessarily unwelcome,’ said Lucy, taking a sip of her death-threatening juice. ‘They’re talking it through in the next few days.’

Hunter leant over and gave Lucy a kiss on her beetroot-stained lips.

‘Apart from that, are you feeling well?’ he asked.

‘I feel great,’ said Lucy. ‘After talking to Olivia, I just lay here daydreaming and thinking about complementary medicine and why it works.’

‘Or whether it’s a placebo,’ said Hunter.

‘Placebos work,’ said Lucy. ‘That’s one of the things that interest me: why is a known therapeutic benefit treated as a glitch?’

‘Because it’s based on deception,’ said Hunter.

‘What deception?’ asked Saul, who had appeared at the terrace gate, photons raining on the sea behind him and the Calder turning very slowly into a new configuration. ‘Is it okay if I come in?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to interrupt but there are a couple of developments on the Capo Santo deal that I’d like to run past you before I fly out. We can talk them through on the phone tomorrow, if you prefer.’

‘Come on in,’ said Hunter.

‘Hi, Saul,’ said Lucy. ‘The “deception” was the placebo effect, and I was asking, where’s the deception? If a patient thinks she’s going to get better and then does get better, why not call it persuasion, or self-healing? The deception is built into the experimental method, it’s not inherent to the effect.’

‘Right,’ said Saul, ‘the deception is in making sugar pills look identical to the pharmaceutical pills they are being tested against; the psychogenic effect is real.’

‘It’s hard to see how to harness it, though,’ said Hunter. ‘It’s been treated for so long as a sign of human frailty that it should be relegated to the Daniel Kahneman penal colony for cognitive bias, rotten intuition, groundless prejudice and misleading heuristics. I guess the real test is what happens to the effect if people know they are being given a sugar pill.’