On a hook in the hallway he had found a ring of keys with a paper tag inscribed ‘Garden’; one of the keys had turned the mortise lock in the summerhouse door, and he had stepped into an air, fungal and slightly sour, like old cider. His first job was to empty the place, and he began to carry out old paint tins and lengths of timber, jars of slug pellets and turpentine, and the delicate remains of field mice and butterflies. He scrubbed the walls, then broke the skin of paint in one of the tins and got to work with a wide brush, spattering paint on his jeans and wishing the summerhouse were much larger, so these tasks might last him for days, and there would be no time to brood on what had happened, to replay for the hundredth time the memory of Alice slumped in her chair on the terrace, a mouthful of tea slopping over her chin and falling in threads to her cardigan.

And if Una had not been there? This was unanswerable. How swift and calm she had been! And when the fits went on, that shuddering that seemed to require such a terrifying effort, she had sent him into the kitchen to call for an ambulance, which they had followed in her car while she explained to him that an attack like this was not unusual ‘in a case like your mother’s’; that she had half expected it, and he was not to be frightened. It nearly always looked worse than it was.

At the hospital they took her into A&E. He had a last glimpse of her as the porters wheeled her into an assessment ward, her arm already connected to a drip bag, her body covered to the neck in a red blanket. Una went with her, and another nurse pointed Alec towards a bench in the corridor opposite some posters about smoking, flu jabs, condoms. He sat down and waited, watching patients shuffle by in their dressing gowns, unshaven older men most of them, peering towards the exits as if still hopeful some friendly face would appear and tell them it was time to get dressed. A woman with a trolley of overused books hurried past, and several ill-looking doctors, younger than Alec, stethoscopes draped round their necks like sacred snakes. Behind the curtains to Alec’s left a child was crying and would not be comforted.

Weirdly, after half an hour, he had fallen asleep, perfectly upright on the bench, and was woken by Brando gently shaking his shoulder, and then leading him to a quieter, more orderly section of the hospital where he had his office, a plain, functional room, not at all grand, with Venetian blinds at the window, and on the desk a photograph of a young man receiving some honour or accolade.

‘You must have had a shock,’ said Brando, perching on a corner of the desk. He was beautifully dressed.