The gifts usually came afterwards. A mix CD or a hand-picked bunch of flowers (probably stolen from a council display box) sent to the office. These days, colourful cushions, junk-shop vases and books with fulsome handwritten dedications on the flyleaf would arrive at the cottage the following week, after Clio had taken and recovered from one of her turns. And then she wouldn’t be in touch for a while, maybe two, three months. Ruth used to think this was out of embarrassment; these days she recognized the terms of their friendship for what it was.

‘Upstairs is all ready for you. How tired are you feeling?’

‘Just sore. In my bones.’

‘Are you hungry? There’s some soup in the fridge, or we could grab a curry from up the road if you wanted.’

‘No. I’m all right.’

Clio had her rituals while she was at the cottage, and Ruth would tick them off as the signs of recovery. After a few days, while Ruth was at work, she would lift the creaky oilskin that had belonged to Ruth’s gran down from its peg, pull on Ruth’s wellies, which were two sizes too big for her, and venture out into the woods behind the garden. Not far at first. Ruth would come in and rub her hand over the oilskin as she hung up her own coat, every day, to check whether its stiffness had been disturbed, whether there was any wetness still on it. She never asked Clio about this; old Frank, who lived next door and had courted Ruth’s gran for years, would let her know.

‘She just stands there,’ he said. ‘She’s right still, keeping the house in her eyeline, not quite on the path. Sometimes for about an hour. No one but us would be able to see her.’

The singing would come back next. Just a faint humming under her breath at first, notes pitched into nowhere as she moved, or a slight drone floating over from the couch where she was reading. If all was going well, in a couple of days this would turn into murmured words, then two or three lines, then the sound; Clio’s lungs waking up as they remembered what they could do. The singing stage was a delicate one, though. She was more vulnerable then than when she slumped in chairs without washing for days, fretting her knuckles together. At this point, Ruth would become solicitous, always made sure the cupboards were well-stocked when she left for work. Once, early on, she’d come home to find that Clio had cut her finger and dripped slashes of blood all over the kitchen trying to make soup. Discarded onion skins littered the counter, the saucepan had burned dry, and Clio was back in bed, her hand wrapped in the sheets, soaking through.