So I left the hospital on the Sunday with hope in my heart, but death in my soul. Outwardly, I wanted to fight with him, and the nurses had boosted my hopes. Especially the adorable fair-haired one who reminded me of the T.V. presenter Sophie Davant, and to whom I could have confided my most private fears in front of the cameras. But, deep down, a sickening voice inside my head – goaded by a night of searching coma online (and the Internet is a risky place to look for information about something like that) – kept whispering, What’s the use? A stage-three coma and it’s hopeless. Remember Michael Schumacher? He’s been in a coma for years. Supposing Louis wakes up with locked-in syndrome? Supposing he never wakes up? I was veering from total despair to the wildest optimism, causing the hospital staff to fear for my mental state. I wanted to tell them not to worry, that I was always like that but today it was more extreme, but I wasn’t sure that would reassure them and I had to get out of there, otherwise I really would go mad.

On Sunday, I was allowed to spend the whole day with Louis. My slumbering child. I expected to see him wake up, turn over and groan that it was much too early for a Sunday. I would have given everything to hear one of those groans of his that ordinarily so annoyed me. But nothing of the sort happened. Nothing happened. The machine regulated his breathing, but his chest was the only part of his body that appeared to be active. I held his hand for most of the day. I massaged his palms, his fingers. His feet too, for ages, slowly. The feel of his warm body comforted me. On his face, I was allowed only to stroke his cheeks. I closed my eyes and saw the little dimple that always appeared when he smiled. I cried, a lot – over his hands, in mine. I sang him lullabies. I hummed his favourite a dozen or so times, the one he still asked for at the age of twelve. The one I’d made up, with my own words. Probably the most tuneless, probably the least pretty lullaby of all. Probably the most beautiful, in his eyes and in mine.