But there’s nothing to hear. Nothing at all. I don’t know what he’s doing on the other side of that barrier of skin and silence. I hate this half-dead man. I’d kill him if he were alive.

I call the speed dial number 1. Someone picks up after seven rings, and I hear a hoarse voice on the other end of the line.

“Hello, Mrs. Tomlin. Can’t you sleep? Neither can Henri,” Nurse Marion says.

He’s alive! I’m so incredibly relieved that instead of greeting Marion I start to sob.

“What’s wrong, Mrs. Tomlin? Is everything all right? Are you crying?”

“I thought he was dead,” I whisper when I’m finally able to speak.

“No, no. Nowhere near. People don’t die so quickly, least of all your Henri. He’s a fighter, and he has unfinished business to take care of. It’s good that you’re thinking of him. Thoughts give patients strength too, you know. Are you still planning to come tomorrow and stay for a fortnight?”

“Yes, of course,” I say.

“Excellent. That’ll be good for him.”

I don’t ask what Nurse Marion means by “unfinished business,” nor do I consider how I’m supposed to manage everything.

Secretly redirecting phone calls from home to my mobile so Wilder doesn’t notice while he’s on his reading tour.

Ralph, Andrea, and Poppy.

Our books and the book fair.

Life and death.

Sam.

And Madelyn.

It feels as if I’m leaping from one stepping-stone to the next with no shore in sight. As if I have more balls in the air than I can juggle. When will I finally get there? When will I drop the first ball that brings all the others crashing down after it?

Sam’s being very brave, and I have to make sure that I am too—for his sake. So there’s no way I’m going to tell Henri’s son that sometimes I can’t go on. But I cannot go on, I really can’t. Not one inch farther.

I breathe in and out and then I get to my feet and carry on.

I take another long swig of Talisker. Nurse Marion once said that she could feel that Henri was close at night, as if he were encased in a cocoon of rubber, and his vital functions seemed robust. She could determine his “sleep architecture.” Another of those expressions you learn on the brink of death: sleep architecture.

I wish I could go back to being myself. However, for some inexplicable reason I know who I am when I’m with Henri.

I hear footsteps coming up the spiral staircase toward me.

“I have to go,” I say.