My thoughts fly back to that moment in the past when he and I were sitting facing each other across my kitchen table. He never wore shoes in my flat and would always sit on the same chair with his bare feet on the wooden floor. Even all these years later, I still don’t like anyone else sitting there. Occasionally I’ll sit opposite his empty chair and stare at it for minutes on end.

“Henri,” I say, clasping his lovely, kind, warm hands. Feeling how tense they have become, I start to massage and move them the way Liz the physiotherapist taught me so that the tendons and the ligaments remain lithe.

Dr. Saul and Dr. Foss, the cynic and his gentleman companion, continue their visits.

I can’t get into my routine today. As always, I breathe in and prepare to tell Henri who he is, why he’s here, and why I’m here. Except today it seems like mumbo-jumbo, and so I tell him what’s on my mind.

“Madelyn’s in a bad way, Henri. I’m worried about her and Sam and you and me too. The rules in this place instruct us to speak calmly and optimistically, but you opened your eyes and yet you can’t see anything. Or can you? How about briefly squeezing my hand, just a little? Neither of those moronic doctors ever needs to know. You can continue to string them along if you like.”

His hand doesn’t move.

“You could blink. Once for yes, twice for no.”

He doesn’t blink.

I RECALL our first kiss. We’d already spent two nights together without exchanging a single word, although on the second night our hands and our eyes spoke. I’ll never forget the ballet our hands performed as they stroked and cradled one another. Never before had I had such intimate sex with a man as during that second night, as Henri and I lay on my bed and our hands made love. Those movements contained the future, and our fingers sketched out and agreed upon every encounter to come—desire, tenderness, seduction, arousal, and release.

On our third night together we kissed. Earlier, we had walked through the dark streets of London from which everyday life had withdrawn and been replaced by street cleaners, and all the bars, so recently thrumming with fate and desire and drunken merriment, had tidied away their chairs and with them any promise of bliss. We walked across the Golden Jubilee Bridge from the Victoria Embankment. I leaned against the railings with my back to the river.

“Never turn your back to the sea,” Henri said all of a sudden, his voice calm and imposing. He placed his hands on the railings on either side of my waist, creating a protective bubble with his arms. I could feel the warmth of his body as at last it came closer to mine.