Martha had been here too, off and on. She was here now, seated by the bed. Sarah had wondered why, until at one point the kaleidoscope turned and she remembered that Martha was a nurse. She felt grateful for her kindness, and from somewhere she summoned the strength to speak.

‘I lost the child,’ she said.

‘It was in the wrong place,’ Martha replied, matter-of-factly. ‘In one of the tubes. Dr Raven had to act.’

‘Does Archie know?’ she asked.

Archie had been the blank in the frame, the missing fragment, his very absence like a presence in itself. Was he too weak to make the journey? Or were they keeping the news from him because he was so ill?

Martha wore a look of surprise, which Sarah could not read.

‘Of course not,’ she replied. ‘Dr Banks is dead. He passed away the same night you fell ill.’

Though she lay on a bed, the bed she had shared with her husband, Sarah felt as though she had fallen from a great height, landing crumpled and broken on the ground. She had known it was inevitable, and yet as the truth of it enveloped her, she understood how little she had been prepared to accept it. The same was true of any fall: knowing the ground was rising to meet you did not lessen its impact.

In the agonising unknowing of the recent weeks, she had sometimes thought that when finally Archie died, she would feel a measure of relief. Instead, she belatedly discovered that uncertainty was so much better than resolution.

She wanted to see him again more than she had ever wanted anything, but not merely to say goodbye. She did not want one more day with him. She wanted a lifetime.

She wept, deeply. Though every shaking sob hurt where she was stitched, she wept. She wept for Archie. She wept for herself. She wept for the life together that they had lost and the life they would never have. The child they would not have.

Somewhere in the fog of grief, she found clarity in a question. Why was she only learning this now?

Part of the answer she knew instinctively: Raven was protecting her. He would not want her to know until she was strong enough, and if he feared she would not live, what would it profit her to learn such news on her own deathbed? But that being so, a more troubling question required an answer: why would Martha take it upon herself to break such news?

Then she saw the reason, through the mist of her tears.

Martha was intent upon her: not merely observing or even vigilant, but utterly rapt, so much so that she did not even appear to be aware that Sarah was looking back. Her face seemed transformed. She no longer wore the same benign, empty expression, as though apologising for herself. Instead there was a focus to her. An alacrity.

She was enjoying Sarah’s grief.