He must get to his bed, though, before he passed out. After swaying down the corridor, Hunter made it into his bedroom, locking the outer door and then closing a further soundproof door behind him. He pressed the button to bring down the steel shutters and, clumsily peeling off his clothes, fell on to the bed and insinuated himself under the covers. He must try to connect with Jade before it was too late.

‘Jade?’ said Hunter, trying to keep his eyes open while he croaked into the phone next to him on the pillow.

‘Hey, Hunter!’

‘Did I wake you?’

‘No, it’s seven o’clock in the morning. I’m already up working with the legal team in Paris. That acquisition you made is amazing, Hunter. You’re amazing.’

‘You think so?’

‘Everybody thinks so,’ said Jade.

Hunter’s eyelids closed and he felt himself swooning into unconsciousness, but he made one last effort.

‘You’ve gotta take a memo …’ he gasped, forcing his eyes open. ‘Space … matter, what is it? Space … and also motion – and fields: are they halfway between space and matter? I mean …’

‘Hunter?’

‘Is anything solid?’ whispered Hunter.

‘Hunter, I’ve taken some notes,’ said Jade, ‘and they sound really interesting to me, but you have to get some rest now. You’ve been working so hard.’

‘At rest,’ said Hunter, ‘or in motion … and, Jade, book me into Nuova Vita … and block out the first week in May for a Digitas party at Plein Soleil.’

‘Great, that’ll flow beautifully into Cannes,’ said Jade. ‘Hunter? Hello? Hunter, don’t forget to switch off your phone!’

‘Oh, yeah, thanks,’ sighed Hunter, just managing to shut it down in time.

12

Olivia was chopping the vegetables for the soup that Francis was going to make for lunch. They had fallen into a rhythm of collaboration as she grew more familiar with the house, no longer searching for the sieve or the peppercorns, or wondering where to fetch the logs when the basket was empty. It was hard to keep her concentration as she diced the carrots; she kept thinking about the weekend she had spent in London helping Lucy through her ‘needle biopsy’. Lucy was now asleep on the sofa next door, trying to recover from the operation in a twilight of painkillers and anaesthetic. Olivia was haunted by yesterday’s drive from the hospital and the memory of Lucy trying to protect herself from the rapid-fire seizures induced by the sunlight darting into the car. At one point, they had been forced to draw over to a shady spot to give her a break. For the rest of the drive, Lucy kept her hands pressed tightly over her eyes to block out the shafts of light. When she arrived at the cottage, Francis had embraced her for rather longer than Olivia would have liked, and then she had gone straight to bed, engulfed by seizure-saturated exhaustion.