‘That’s the beauty of it,’ said Saul, ‘it still works. Ted Kaptchuk is the top placebo guy. He’s at Harvard Med and he’s shown that what he calls “open label placebo” has a powerful effect. People know they are taking a sugar pill and sixty per cent of them still report significant relief of symptoms.’

‘How would you market that?’ said Hunter.

‘Call it Open Placebo,’ said Saul, ‘and get an endorsement from Harvard Med. The margins would be incredible: close to zero cost for manufacturing the product and at the same time a moral responsibility to augment the patient’s sense of receiving something valuable by pricing it up.’

‘Could they not be sugar pills?’ said Lucy. ‘It clashes with my diet, and with everyone’s dental health.’

‘No problem,’ said Saul, ‘but it mustn’t be something that anyone else is claiming is beneficial, otherwise it’ll get lost in the supplement zone.’

‘I’m enjoying the supplement zone,’ said Lucy. ‘Just because something is actually beneficial, like this fabulous juice, doesn’t mean that my conviction that it’s beneficial can’t give it a placebo turbo.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Saul. ‘Ted Kaptchuk’s work is all about expanding the definition of placebo beyond a trick pill used in a pharmaceutical trial. He wants to include and quantify the whole therapeutic drama surrounding prescriptions and procedures: the attentive listening, the rituals and the costumes, the diplomas on the wall, the authority of the healer.’

‘And being touched,’ said Lucy. ‘The laying on of hands – not in a faith-healer way, but just as an acknowledgement that my body is in need of attention. I’ve spent so much time in hospitals looking at computer images of my brain or talking to a doctor who is reading a printout of some test results. I think that’s one of the appeals of complementary medicine: the acupuncturist and the herbalist take my pulses and look at my tongue and touch my muscles; they are delivering the massive reassurance of dealing directly with my body and not just with my data.’

‘Totally,’ said Saul.

‘Listen, I must let you have your Capo Santo talk,’ said Lucy, beginning to sit up in the hammock.

‘You don’t have to go anywhere,’ said Hunter. ‘I’m going to lay my hands on you,’ he said, gently easing her back into a lying position, ‘now I know how much you like that.’

‘Why, Doctor, I feel inexplicably well,’ said Lucy, as she subsided into the hammock.

‘We call it personal haptic gap closure therapy, or PHGCT,’ said Hunter sagely.

‘I feel so lucky to be involved in this trial,’ said Lucy. ‘I hope there are some vaguely similar people in vaguely similar circumstances who are not receiving PHGCT as a control.’

‘Don’t worry, Lucy, this is an experiment structured to the most rigorous standards.’

Lucy smiled at Hunter, who rested his hand fondly for a moment on her tummy before turning to Saul.

‘So, where are we with The Inquisition?’ he asked.

‘They want fifty per cent,’ said Saul.