I didn’t give in to the temptation to open the notebook. I decided to put it back where I’d found it and to think carefully about the right thing to do. I was very subdued during dinner. My mother noticed, of course – she always notices everything. I was afraid she’d go rummaging around in Louis’s room the following night, so I pretended to be reading a book, of which I’ve never managed to get past page eight, and waited patiently for her to start snoring. Then I went and fetched the notebook and took it into my room. I spent several hours endlessly mulling over the problem, unable to make up my mind, then I fell asleep. I didn’t read the contents; I just flicked through to see if it was full, and it was – or several pages were, at any rate.

In the middle of the night, I woke with a jolt. I’d had a strange dream. I was sitting beside Louis, in his bedroom at home. Louis yawned and closed his eyes, but I wouldn’t let him fall asleep; I was reading to him and, whenever he was about to drop off, I called him to order. Then the room turned into a hospital room, and this time Louis was asleep. I was reading the same book to him, but he wasn’t moving any more, he wasn’t responding. I closed the book and acted out the scenes, but it had no effect on him. I carried on miming and I was growing older. When I reached sixty, Louis opened his eyes and let out a yell. I dropped the book and saw that it wasn’t a novel or a collection of short stories. It was the notebook. I woke up in a sweat.

A little seed had been planted, a crazy idea was germinating in my mind. I had a fixed idea that was going round and round: Louis isn’t dead; he’s in a coma, but he’s alive. Thelma, anything is still possible, he’s got nearly a month to wake up, he’s going to wake up. The medical team kept repeating that he was probably completely unconscious. Were they sure? No, they couldn’t say so with certainty. So there was a chance that he could hear me, that he could feel me. I was going to hold on to that.

I had to make my son want to come back, entice him by showing him all the things he was missing out on by remaining in a coma. Make him want to live. It was a crazy idea, but do-able. I was convinced of it.

The players? A sportsman: Louis. A coach: me.

The challenge? Emerging from a coma, freestyle.