‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ said Dr Hammond.

‘If this diagnosis isn’t a good reason to prescribe tranquillisers, what is?’ said Olivia.

‘All right,’ said Dr Hammond, ‘but don’t take too many at once.’

‘If I wanted to die, I’d be asking you for a bottle of champagne,’ said Lucy.

Dr Hammond’s face remained solemn.

‘I’ll give you a prescription for fourteen Xanax; that should tide you over until you see Mr McEwan, the surgeon. I am also prescribing a drug called Keppra, which will stop the seizures.’

‘When will I be able to see Mr McEwan?’

‘Early next week, when you were supposed to see me.’

‘Oh god, I can’t wait that long, I really can’t; I’ll go mad. Sorry, but my brain – I recognise that this may be about to change radically – has always been my main asset, my only asset really, and the more knowledge I have, the better. My new boss is flying in from America tomorrow and he absolutely cannot know what is going on, but that means that I absolutely must know what is happening to me – as well as stifling it with Xanax – by the way, can I have some right now?’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to go and collect the prescription,’ said Dr Hammond.

‘Shall I ask Francis to get it?’ asked Olivia. ‘My boyfriend,’ she explained to Dr Hammond, ‘he’s in the waiting room.’

‘That’s fine,’ said Dr Hammond, handing it to her. ‘I’ll try to have a word with Mr McEwan to see if he can fit you in any earlier.’

Francis was trying to relax as best he could in the strange circumstances, fixing his gaze on a mid-point between a heap of wrinkled magazines and the silent, subtitled television news. Although Olivia told him nothing, which made him like her even more, she looked too distraught, when she asked him to collect the prescription, to disguise the serious nature of the diagnosis.

He went outside into the pale radiance of the morning. The fading leaves in the gardens and the fluorescent ambulances parked around the square both pointed to mortality in their more or less strident ways. He saw staff hurrying in to work and neurological patients with complicated walks making their way towards the central hospital. On a bench in the gardens a man repeatedly tried to eat a croissant but more often than not missed his mouth, his overcoat scattered with the debris of his failed attempts. Francis tried to irradiate him with strength and calm, but only realised how little he had of either.

After leaving Noble Rot, they had all known, more or less, that it was probably bad news, while hoping they were wrong. Olivia invited Lucy to stay at Belsize Park, in Charlie’s old room, which Lucy knew well from the years when they’d gone out together in their twenties.