At the distant end of the afternoon Lola appeared. In this stuffy room my daughter looked supernaturally beautiful and healthy, with her bright eyes and polished skin, as if all the threats of mortality had been airbrushed out of her face. I clung briefly to her, breathing in her sweet and perfectly familiar smell. Jack sidled in in her wake. He edged round the bed and, after a quick glance at Ted, leaned his forehead against the window and stared out. I hugged him too and he submitted briefly, although I could still feel the tense curve of his body arching away from me.

‘Have you had something to eat?’ I asked him.

‘Yeah. Lo fixed me a sandwich. I ate it in the car.’

The red chair was the only one. Lola went out to the main ward and borrowed another. She handed me a bag of apples and took a framed photograph out of her nylon rucksack. It was of herself and Jack and me, taken on last year’s summer holiday in Devon, the one that usually stood on the dresser in our kitchen. For once we were all smiling, looking straight into the camera, and now I noticed that each of us had a variation of Ted’s strong features overprinted on our own. She placed the picture on Ted’s locker, angled so that he could see it when he woke up. ‘I thought he might like it,’ she said, ‘if he wakes up when we aren’t here.’

The love implicit in the simple gesture touched me and I felt sorry that I hadn’t thought of it myself. ‘A very good idea.’

‘We’re all he’s got,’ she said matter-of-factly and this was the truth. There was no wife, not even an auntie, now, if you didn’t count Jean Andrews. I didn’t know who Ted’s friends were, if there were any remaining.

‘How is he?’

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jack’s head half turn at Lola’s question. He wanted to hear but didn’t want me to see him listening.

‘Holding his own,’ I said. I was afraid that even though he seemed to sleep, he might hear what we were saying. I would tell them Dr Bennett’s verdict later, out of Ted’s earshot.

Lola nodded. ‘Go and get a cup of tea, Mum and eat some fruit. I’ll be here.’

‘Do you want to come with me, Jack?’

‘No,’ he said.