‘I’ll try,’ I tell him. My mind is still in total turmoil but I realise that this might provide a welcome distraction, for a while at least. Will lifts his head from the sketch pad and studies me for a moment.

‘Are you all right, Tilly?’ he asks. ‘You look a little pale.’

‘I’m fine,’ I assure him. ‘Just tired. You know how it is.’

‘I don’t know how you nurses do it,’ Jonathan says sympathetically. ‘Right. One across. “Agriculture in remote Chinese dynasty”. Seven letters. Any ideas?’

‘Nope,’ I tell him after thinking about it for a moment.

‘Remember what we did the other day,’ he encourages. ‘One part is the answer, and the other tells you how to get there. So, in this instance we’re looking for something that means “agriculture” and the remote Chinese dynasty is the clue. What Chinese dynasties can you think of?’

‘Ming is the only one I know.’

‘That’ll do. Now, what about the remote bit? What other words do you know that mean the same as remote?’

‘Umm. Far away, distant, isolated.’

‘Good! Take far and Ming, stick them together and what do you get?’

‘Farming.’

‘Which is our agriculture,’ he says triumphantly, filling it in. ‘Now, the R in farming gives us the initial letter in two down, for which the clue is “Controversial novelist in a hurry to pass”. What do you think?’

Half an hour later, the train crash that is my relationship with Luke has been beaten to the back of my mind by a flurry of clues, and I’m surprised to note that I’m starting to get them. Two down turned out to be ‘Rushdie’, and I’ve learned to spot some of the clues within the clues, even getting one without any help from Jonathan at all. Will has spent the entire time engrossed in his sketch pad, and hasn’t taken any part in the problem solving.

‘What are you working on?’ I ask him as Jonathan folds up the paper.

‘Will’s a keen artist,’ Jonathan tells me with a smile. ‘He’s good too, although I would say that, wouldn’t I?’

‘Can I see?’

Will looks mildly uncomfortable and clutches the pad to his chest. ‘Umm. Confession time. This one has you in it, and I wouldn’t want you to be offended.’

‘You can’t say that and not show me!’ I exclaim.

He sighs and turns the pad round so I can look. The picture may be hastily drawn, but he’s captured the likenesses perfectly and it’s obvious straight away that it’s a picture of Jonathan and me engrossed in the crossword. Far from being offended, I suspect he’s flattered me somewhat in his depiction, but it’s impossible to tell how. I just know that I somehow look better than if he’d taken a photo.

‘This is superb, Will,’ I enthuse.