She stood outside the closed door and now felt disappointed that she had told her story, she should have known his brain was in no state to take it in, or even remotely comprehend what she was trying to get across. But on moving slowly away, across the big brown room, her feeling changed: that is why she’d told her story, because he wasn’t listening. She didn’t want anyone to know, really. Maybe bits had sunk in, she conceded, walking into the kitchen, now fully comfortable in her reasoning. Manita had left her a piece of the roast chicken and some salad. She poured herself a large glass of sauvignon, the one from Australia, and reflected on whether she was being Mother Teresa and doing this for herself, not curing, just enjoying the process.

She was relieved to see Manita had retrieved his Land Rover Discovery key, attached to the Sixt rental tag, from his chinos, and also his phone. She put both in a drawer and before she went to bed, she made sure all the alarms were on.

She didn’t want her patient escaping. She didn’t think she would bother to propose the agreement.

No point.

Chapter Twenty-one

‘He is not yours, I’m telling you. Why don’t you fucking believe me? How many times? I am sorry, of course I am, how does apologising change anything? But don’t you understand in your fucked-up brain?’

He always felt that recurring accusation was a cruel blow too.

‘I wanted a child, I wanted us to have a child. Together, but, well you know, fuck it, stop looking at me like that.’

‘But how are you so convinced he is not my child?’

This is what he never wanted to hear, and it was at this point, at this question, that he usually woke in a sweat. And, on cue, Ever awoke, and was indeed covered in a thin coat of sweat; heaviest over his chest, where he could feel the sheet was also wet.

He sat up not knowing for a while where he was, in that moment of disconnect that sleep gives you when it stops, before the realisation of life kicks in. Something Ever rarely wanted to kick in, his life, although the dream that woke him was as bad as life. It was life.

He sat up in bed and looked around for the clock, which was on the other side of the bed, standing digitally red on its own bedside table. He didn’t really need to look at the time, it would be five minutes past four: it always was, and 4.05 turned to 4.06 while he was confirming what he already knew. A waste of a head-turn, except it also revealed the television remote that he hoped would control the flat screen on the wall opposite the bed. And turn its darkness into light.