Inès was standing beside her, the colleague she had recruited, who assisted her with her caseload. The session had been adjourned, she told her. She had just called the office to postpone her upcoming meetings. Inès was efficient and quick off the mark, as always. In a word, perfect. She seemed concerned about Sarah, offered to come with her to the hospital. But Sarah told her she had better get back to the office, she could be of more use there. She could get on with preparing tomorrow’s assignment.

Sarah sat waiting in the Emergency department at CHUM. Montreal’s university hospital did not live up to its charming acronym, she thought. In Canada, the word meant a boyfriend, a lover. But there was nothing to seduce her here. Eventually, she rose to leave; she had no intention of spending two hours waiting for three stitches to her forehead when a sticking plaster would do the job. She had to get back to work. A doctor caught her by the arm and escorted her back to her seat. She must wait to be examined. Sarah protested, but had no choice other than to comply.

The intern who examined her, at last, had long, delicate hands and an air of concentration. He asked her a great many questions, to which Sarah gave brief, laconic answers. She couldn’t see the point of all this, she was fine, she kept telling him, but the intern persisted with his examination. Against her better judgement, like a criminal suspect delivering a hard-won confession, she admitted that yes, she had been feeling tired lately. How could she not feel tired when she had three children, a house to keep, a fridge to fill, and a full-time job?

Sarah didn’t tell him that she had woken up exhausted every morning for the past month. That every evening, when she got home, after listening to Ron’s report of his day with the kids, after dinner with them, after putting the twins to bed, after helping Hannah with her homework, she would collapse onto the sitting-room sofa and fall asleep before she had time to reach for the remote and switch on the giant flat-screen TV she had just bought, but never watched.

She didn’t tell him about the pain in her chest, on the left side, that she had felt from time to time, for a while now. Probably nothing … She didn’t want to talk about it, not there, not now, not to this stranger in a white coat, with his cold, penetrating stare. Now was not the time.