‘I’m sorry. The undamaged portion of your father’s heart muscle has been working very hard since the attack and we have been helping him as far as possible with drugs to stimulate the heart’s natural rhythm. But I am afraid even this is gradually failing him now. I think Dr Bennett explained?’

I bent my head. ‘Yes.’

It had been human but utterly vain to hope, of course. I wanted the doctor to go away and take the nurses with him, and leave the two of us together. Dr Srinivasar knew this, because when I had composed my face and turned back to Ted he was lying quietly, alone again, under a dim light. I closed the door of the little room and took my place in the chair once more. I thought there were fewer wires clipped to him now and the levels of liquid in the bags hanging over his head didn’t change.

He was awake and he didn’t look as if he was in pain. Keeping him comfortable, Dr Bennett called it. Ted licked his lips and his neck muscles worked as if to squeeze words out of his ruined heart. ‘You’ve been a good girl,’ he whispered.

Automatically, defensively, keeping my long-learned distance I muttered, ‘Not really.’

I wasn’t ready for Ted’s praise and in my unpreparedness I couldn’t have assured him in return that he had been a good father.

I would have snatched my answer back if only I could, but Ted surprised me. He let his head fall further back against the pillows and laughed. It was a small coughing echo of his old laugh, but still there was no mistaking it. He said one more thing after that, on a long breath. I thought it was ‘my girl’.

As the minutes ebbed and I waited I knew that now it was too late for us to make our spoken allowances to each other. He lay with his eyes closed and the rise and fall of his chest grew shallower until I could no longer see it. I pressed my face against his cheek. Tears began to run out of my eyes and into the sheet. I put my arm under his shoulder as if I were going to lift him up and held him close against me. If I could have lifted him properly and carried him across the divide before laying him down again to rest, I would have done it. As I wept I told him, the angry words and the bitter words threading with the words of love, that I loved him and I hated the childhood he had given me, and I would always love him. He didn’t answer and I didn’t expect him to. I knew that he was dead.