‘What can I do?’ Caz said, as soon as I told her the news. If there is ever a favour to be done for someone else, an empty slot in a rota or a spare pair of hands required, Caz is always the first to volunteer.

‘Will you have Jack, if I have to stay over at the hospital? If Lola can’t hold the fort, that is?’

Jack didn’t currently get on all that well with Dan and Matthew, Caz’s boys, but in this emergency he would have to make the best of it.

‘Of course,’ she assured me. ‘Anything else? What about some shopping? Or listen, I’ve got a chicken, I can roast it and bring it over …’

Caz and I both use food as shorthand for love. With Mel and me it’s more a matter of romance and theatre.

Caz was saying, ‘It’s very sudden. He wasn’t ill before, was he?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘It is very sudden.’ I don’t think that even Caz, whom I have known for all these years, has ever really noticed how little I actually talk about my father or about the past.

‘I’ll be thinking of you, darling,’ she said in her warm voice. ‘Call me as soon as there’s any news.’

Finally I dialled Mel’s office direct line. After I had told her what had happened she said, ‘That’s quite strange, isn’t it? The way we were talking about him last night?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you want me to come up and keep you company?’ It was a generous offer. Mel worked for a big headhunting company and I could guess at the rapid mental diary reshuffling she must be doing, although there wasn’t the faintest hint of it in her tone.

‘No. But thank you.’

‘Sadie?’

‘Yes?’

‘You can’t change or even affect what’s going to happen, you know. You just have to accept this, for him and for yourself.’

Mel understood me well and my need to control what went on around me. She knew that it was disturbing for me to feel powerless, as I did most of the time where Jack was concerned, although she didn’t know what had made me this way.

‘I know,’ I murmured.