‘Yes . . . I’m fine. Thank you.’ I made it to the door, fingers grappling for the handle, stability.

‘Constance.’

I turned to look at you.

‘Thanks for being so great about everything.’

Tell me, Doctor, when people die of a broken heart, does it always happen fast? I know it happens. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. You mustn’t be surprised that I know things. I know lots of things now. But I wonder if heartbreak can also cause slow, drawn-out deaths. Over months, years. Perhaps that’s why your mother died. It was why mine died. She had cancer, yes. But really, she’d been dying for twenty years. Since that day. That weird day.

After leaving your office, I’d somehow kept it together. Switched off. Didn’t cry. Though I was glad of the relief from pretence when Linda sent me into the stationery cupboard to check stock levels. I couldn’t think straight, let alone count bloody prescription forms, but when I returned with a list of fabricated numbers, Dr Franco was waiting for me in reception.

‘Oh . . . Dr Franco. I’m . . . I’m sorry . . . but I . . . I can’t do today after all . . . Dr Stevens wants to go through something with me during lunch.’

Linda took the list from me. ‘What are you talking about? Dr Stevens has just this minute left. He’s on home visits for the rest of the day.’

Sat in Dr Franco’s vast consulting room, engulfed by the soft leather seat, staring over at the books and certificates that laced the walls to avoid his dark, full-of-concern eyes, I felt like I could have died of takotsubo cardiomyopathy. I didn’t. But I still often wonder if I will.

‘Now, I don’t want you to feel worried or nervous, Constance. It’s only a chat. A friend who wants to help if I can . . . You don’t even have to stay.’ He moved an antique wooden chair with a red velvet seat from near his desk and placed it a few feet away from me before sitting, smiling.

I was going to politely decline. Say it was very kind of him, but I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it. Then he said, ‘So how are you? How was yesterday?’ And my face must have betrayed me because he followed it with, ‘That good, eh?’

I dropped my head. Wanted to tell him. Someone. Not about the funeral, about you. Ask him what to do. How to get you back. That’s all I wanted. He’d know. That’s what they do, these people, isn’t it? Decipher minds. And if you can do that, know how people think, you can get them to do anything.

‘Why don’t you start by telling me about your mum?’

I stared up at him. ‘What do you mean? Like what?’ My foot tapped an anxious rhythm on the worn Persian rug and I pressed my knee to make it stop.