The consultant cardiologist was a woman, younger than me. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but Ted had talked about the quack and finding out what he had to say. That was Ted all over: proper jobs, like this one, were done by men.

The doctor held out her hand, with a professionally sympathetic smile. ‘Susan Bennett,’ she said and we shook hands.

I sat down in the chair she indicated.

I remembered the shadow that had slid into the restaurant last night and found myself repeating over and over in my head, don’t, please don’t say it, just let him get better …

Susan Bennett explained that it had been a serious attack, bigger than they had at first suspected. A large proportion of the heart muscle had been affected.

I listened carefully, intending to work out later what was really being said, but I understood quickly there was no need to try to read between the words. Dr Bennett gave me the unvarnished truth. There was no likelihood of long-term recovery, she said, given the damage that had already occurred. The question was when rather than if the end would come, and how to manage the intervening time.

‘I see,’ I murmured. The voice in my head had stopped. All I could hear was a roaring silence.

I realised that Dr Bennett was asking me a question. She wanted to know, if there were to be another huge heart attack, how I felt about an attempt to resuscitate my father. Did I want them to try, or should they let him go in peace?

‘I … I would like to think about it. And perhaps to talk to him about it. What usually happens in these cases?’

What am I supposed to say, I wondered? No, please just stand aside, don’t bother to help him? Or, I absolutely insist that your technicians come running to his bedside with their brutal paddles and try to shock him back into the world?

‘Every case is different,’ she said gently. ‘I’m sorry to have to give you bad news.’

‘Does he know?’

‘We haven’t told him what I have just told you, if that is what you are asking.’

‘He’s over eighty,’ I said, as if his age somehow made the news slightly less bad. What I actually meant was to deplore the total of years that he and I had allowed to pass, until we had unwittingly reached this last minute where his doctor was telling me that Ted was going to die soon.

She nodded anyway. ‘If there is anyone else, any other members of the family, it might be a good idea if they came in to see him soon.’

‘How long is it likely to be?’

‘I don’t know,’ Susan Bennett said. I liked her for not pretending omniscience. ‘We’ll do what we can to keep him comfortable.’