‘Whisky, for you, Herr Heideck?’ she said, handing him a glass into which she’d poured a double measure, hoping … Hoping for what? That, suddenly intoxicated, he would carry her to his room, tear off her dinner dress and do what he had done with her before? That the jolt of alcohol would clear the blockage in his memory?

‘Why are you laughing, Lena?’ said Anton.

‘I don’t know. I think it must be something Johanna said.’

‘I’m wearing one of the new shirts. Is it all right?’

‘Yes, it’s nice.’

‘Tomorrow morning, it’s the blue one.’

He smiled and turned to talk to Dr Bernthaler, as though he had spoken to Lena for as long as politeness required.

Quelling an urge to kiss him on the cheek, Lena hurried back to the kitchen, where the cook was shouting at the porter, Norbert. Hans was decanting wine with a tremor in his pouring hand.

‘Let me help,’ said Lena, giving the kiss to Hans instead, something he never seemed to mind.

‘All right. You can leave the white wine in the bottle. Pour the red carefully and leave that last little bit with the dregs in.’

‘I will,’ said Lena, thinking she might leave a little more than just the sediment for later.

When the church bell clanged half past seven, the dining room began to fill. The circular table held a dozen places, which were taken by the two superintendents, Bernthaler and Andritsch, with Martha and any guests of the Schloss. The remaining places were offered to different people each day. Martha called it the Captain’s Table in the hope that people would want to be invited, even if this arrangement placed a burden on the doctors to entertain. The rest of the room was filled with tables holding two, four or six people, drawn from patients who felt well enough. Their conditions varied in severity, from the Viennese of both sexes who enjoyed the hydro and the massage and the large dinners, to those who had suffered severe breakdowns and were being talked and nursed back to health. On good evenings, the atmosphere could be therapeutic, as patients were distracted from their obsessions by wine and laughter.

As a release for her own elation, Lena began to tease Johanna about a young man who sat with his mother in the far corner of the room. Florian was his name, and he had come to the Schloss Seeblick five weeks earlier, having abandoned his studies as a postgraduate at Vienna University when he fell into a depression that made it impossible for him to work. He was having therapy with Martha as well as an intensive exercise regime of long walks and gymnastic exercises which made him hungry at dinner time – an encouraging sign, it was thought.

Florian had melancholy eyes, a silky brown moustache that made him look older than his age and a brocade waistcoat. He seemed uneasy at the presence of his mother, who had taken the train from Vienna to visit him for a couple of days.