Once their voices had vanished up the stairs, moving as stealthily as a robber caught where she ought not to be, Lily left.

Outside, the promised snowstorm had arrived. The flakes poured from the sky in diagonal lines then backed up on the wind and swirled in the halos from the street lamps. Doggo woofed and snorted, bucking about excitedly and kicking up snow, glancing at Lily as if inviting her to play.

‘Not in the mood,’ she said to him quietly. She pulled up her hood and trudged the couple of minutes back to the annexe, the snow blowing into her eyes and making them burn.

Isaac had been playing telephone tag with Lily all day. It had been amazingly hard to find a time when he could conduct a call in private. Hayley was drowsy but rarely seemed to fall into proper sleep. She sat propped up in the armchair, a book in her lap or the TV on. She was what she described as ‘sore’, carrying the area under her arm where the drains emerged as if it were a nest of boils. When he’d helped her wash this morning he hadn’t been able to avoid seeing the bloody fluid in the drain bottles and had felt briefly lightheaded as he did what he had to do to help her wash. She couldn’t take a bath because of the drains and couldn’t shower because of the dressings.

The last time he’d been in proximity to Hayley in any state of undress they’d been in a relationship. He’d known her body then, the body she’d worked hard to keep smooth and desirable.

Now … now it was wounded. Altered. Thoroughly unnerved and miserable by having to accept his help, Hayley didn’t know whether to be grateful or hateful, so alternated between the two, leaving him edgy and biting his tongue. He never remembered being in such an uncomfortable situation in his life.

For Isaac’s part, he felt cornered. If Hayley was the kind of woman who had twenty friends to call on or close family both he and Hayley would have avoided this situation like the plague. She hadn’t even told him about her mastectomy until she was forced into it.

He made her meals. They talked stiltedly. He made tea and coffee, watched her take her meds. Hung around for when he was needed. Time dragged. Hayley was emotional and cried twice. He didn’t remember ever seeing her cry. The high spot of her day seemed to be when Vicky rang from Cornwall to ask how she was, though Hayley bravely brushed aside her own situation and asked after Vicky and Nicola’s dad. ‘Not good,’ had been Vicky’s answer, apparently.