Whoever he might be, however, there is one immutable fact: he’s a man who loves his wife. So pull yourself together, he tells himself, and be a husband. He finishes the records and is starting on the tapes when one of his favourite arias, ‘He Was Despised’, fills the room. The tears begin again. This time, he retreats to the bathroom.

Sitting on the cold hard edge of the bath, sobbing quietly, the strangest sense comes over him. His younger self rises unbidden from memory, the boy he used to be, living with his family in Perth. It’s Christmas morning, summer holidays, and everything is possible. Hope and opportunity march in unison, and so many wonderful dreams just waiting for maturity to make them a reality. He feels it now, crying in the bathroom, he feels all that possibility. And he knows he’s crying for the loss of that boy for whom a thousand roads beckoned. And he’s crying, too, for the ageing man approaching the future with his face averted, threatened with a lonely dead end.

Sylvie is at the other end of the house. She’s in a turmoil. She can find no solutions to her shattered life, she can’t even say what she wants to happen. She’s a woman without options and preferences, a woman without desires.

It’s best, she decides, to keep busy. It’s best not to think.

Monday is sheet-changing day. She starts in her bedroom, and, as usual, Butch with a ball in his mouth scampers in for the bed-making game. He leaps on the bed as she is removing the sheets, and she orders him down; he stands by the bed following her every movement until she has fitted the lower sheet, then jumps up again. Again she orders him down. He makes a nest in the quilt piled on the floor, and watches with an unwavering gaze while she shakes out the top sheet and tucks it in with hospital corners. Finally, she tips Butch off the quilt, fluffs it over the sheets, smooths it down, and invites the dog up on the newly made bed. And there he perches, eager for some ball-throwing. But instead of their usual game, Sylvie sinks down next to him. Butch, sensing all is not well, settles sphinx-like beside her, his head resting on his paws.