‘Quite sure. There is a degree of stability for Sassy here at the moment, what with Pa not getting any worse over the last few days, and I think the last thing she needs right now is to see her parents arguing, or being in tears together. Friday will be soon enough.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘If that’s what you want.’

‘It’s not what I want,’ she said, again quite sharply. ‘I’m just being practical. Look, I have to go now as the home carer has just arrived. Call me later—and don’t forget!’

She hung up before I even had a chance to say ‘I love you’, let alone tell her what I had been thinking—about us perhaps moving back towards London, maybe not right back into the very centre, but into the suburbs, close enough for her to be able to commute to the cancer labs at Lincoln’s Inn each morning and yet still be home to Sassy and me every evening at a decent hour. Somewhere from where we could easily access the pleasures and delights of the big city without the need for expensive hotels and overnight babysitters.

I believed that the three nights a week spent away from me in London, with this Samantha woman, sampling again the exciting nightlife that Marina and I had once enjoyed together, had turned her head, to say nothing of the way the two of them had clearly worked themselves into an anti-Sid frenzy.

Perhaps the last ten days Marina had spent in Holland, away from Sam’s influence, had, ironically, been to my advantage.

I sat on the side of my bed for quite some time, holding my phone in my hand, going over and over what she had said. Was it good news for our marriage? Or bad? Perhaps only time, and the coming weekend, would tell.

Chico was snoozing in Marina’s comfy kitchen armchair when I went downstairs for some coffee.

‘All quiet?’ I asked him, as he opened one eye.

‘As a church mouse. Not so much as a squeak.’

‘Good. I hope my little intervention may have frightened them off.’

‘Let’s hope so, but I wouldn’t bank on it,’ Chico said philosophically. ‘So what’s the plan for today? More wanderin’ around in towels?’

‘Not if I can help it,’ I replied, but I had little or no idea what else to do. My overnight thinking had produced absolutely no results—nothing, nada, zilch—just a tired boy who’d had insufficient sleep. I yawned.

‘But I want to listen again to the recording we made in the steam room yesterday. There was something Valance said that I want to hear again.’

‘What?’

‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t have to listen to it again. But I know there’s something in it that’s not quite right.’