I could feel the emotion building up in me again, with tears welling in my eyes. I turned away. In spite of not being a blood relation, Charles was the nearest I had ever had to a father, my biological one having carelessly fallen to his death from a ladder eight months before I was born. But even Charles would have had difficulty coping with a surrogate son in tears. All those years in the Navy had taught him to keep his upper lip very stiff, and he would expect the same from me.

I gathered myself and turned back.

‘I hope it’s not too late.’

‘What did she say?’

Part of me thought that it was none of his business, but I suppose it was. With Marina’s family living across the water in Fryslân, Charles had become a surrogate father not only to me but also to her, plus a much-loved honorary grandfather to Saskia. Indeed, just before she’d been born, we had moved out of London to the house in West Oxfordshire just so we could be near him.

‘She said I loved my new hand more than I loved her.’

‘And do you?’

‘Of course not. They’re different things. But she said that whenever I touch her with it, she shudders with revulsion.’

‘Oh dear.’

It certainly was oh dear.

I slumped down into the armchair facing Charles and took a large swig of the Dalwhinnie malt, enjoying, as always, that first searing heat in the throat as the alcohol descended.

I loved my wife more than anything else in the whole world, with the possible exception of my daughter. But I also adored having two hands again. It made me feel whole and normal after so many years as an oddity—someone who hadn’t even been able to join in applause.

Okay, I had to admit the hand wasn’t perfect.

For the transplant to occur in the first place, the team at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Roehampton had had to find a left hand that matched not just with my blood group but also with the size, colour and hair patterns of my right. While they had done their best, it wasn’t like plugging in a new light bulb that matched exactly the one that had blown. There were differences, not least in my skin, where there was an obvious zigzag join in my arm between the real me and the newcomer.

It had taken fifteen hours of surgery to splice everything together.