She’s floundering. She remembers the look of horror on Harry’s face when she held his hand and kissed him in the garden. She wants to touch him but she’s frightened. It was the kiss that caused his disgust, as if she was engaged in the preliminaries of necrophilia. His eyes are reddish: she thinks his soul has been crying. She tries to imagine what it’s like to be barely alive. Is there some primal instinct still urging Harry not to die? He moans now and she wonders if he is suffering, not via his conscious mind, but simply suffering pain on the invertebrate level, an overwhelming headache, for example. Julian said that they were advising that there was no point in keeping him alive artificially. Harry’s hand is contracting and she reaches out to hold it in the faint hope that he will take comfort. It closes on her fingers with the simple-minded grip of a crab. She wants to call the doctor to release her, but then a spasm seizes Harry, his mouth gapes, closes, his eyes open and close again and then they roll upwards and around the perimeter of his eye sockets as if he’s having a fit.

Oh God, oh God.

‘Goodbye, dear Harry,’ she whispers, but not too near the agitated head; she fears it could snap at her with those regular and youthful teeth, the work of Harley Street’s finest implantologists. She sees now that her eighteen years with Harry have been peopled by flunkies. His relationships were always one-sided; everyone deferred to him and he knew no other way. And in those years she, too, has been drawn into a sort of seine net of privilege, with hairdressers, florists, drivers, pilots, doctors, dentists, gardeners, tennis coaches and boatmen all eager to serve, all trembling with the desire to be touched by the holy mystery of great wealth. The truth is that Harry was a coldly ruthless, determinedly selfish but charming man, who never questioned this fawning. It wasn’t his fault: the family name carries too much weight and gives off the low humming sound of immense privilege.