Maybe it is envy. Not quite envy of another woman though, I realise as I watch him drape the blue material around Mr Wilde’s head. I have never met Mrs Prince and don’t even know what she looks like, but I can recognise the snake that writhes inside me at the time she must have spent with him, the things she must know about him. I imagine them sitting over a wine, talking about art, and I swallow.

God, I think. You really have got it bad for this bloke.

‘Kitty, can you help me with the last drape?’

I snap out of my musings and tug the blue material down, and try to smile. I banish all thoughts of Mrs Prince, vow to never have these feelings again, and focus on the patient.

Dr Prince looks down. ‘I’ve grown quite fond of John,’ he says. ‘I’d better make a decent effort with my sutures.’

‘Pity these sutures are so ugly,’ I say. ‘Mrs Wilde won’t be impressed.’

He laughs. ‘How do you think we could improve them? Sutures of gold?’

‘Why not?’

His eyes crinkle thoughtfully. ‘Have you been to Japan?’ he asks unexpectedly.

I shake my head.

‘I have a friend who collects Japanese ceramics,’ he says as a nurse ties the back of his scrub gown. ‘They have this wonderful tradition: when pottery cracks, instead of discarding it, they fill the defect with gold. They call them precious scars. Some of the pieces are really quite something.’

Even though we are standing inside an operating theatre I am transported somewhere else. I’m walking down an avenue of cherry blossoms, past ancient potters, all fixing their broken pottery with rivers of gold inside a Japanese garden.

Dr Prince has a terrible and wonderful effect on me. Later, as we lean over Mr Wilde’s open brain, I’m overly aware of his presence, and how close we’re standing to each other.

We stay like that for hours. He leans in, his miniscule tools carving a delicate path through the mess of vessels and lobes and tumour in front of us. He occasionally sets me a task and nods his approval when I complete it successfully.

‘You never know,’ he murmurs, his eyes fixed on my hands as I carefully cauterise a piece of fat, ‘we might make a surgeon out of you yet.’

‘I don’t know,’ I reply, trying to figure out exactly how much finger pressure I need to put on the device so as not to burn away an important part of Mr Wilde’s brain tissue. ‘It seems like an awful lot of work.’

I’m not looking at him because I’m focusing so hard on the open brain in front of me, but I hear him laugh and feel inordinately pleased.