‘Sorry to disturb,’ she said, ‘but I found this in a stack of paperwork. It must have got lost in the shuffle, what with all the… ’ Her voice faltered and she placed an envelope on his desk. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘Nothing, thank you. Except, perhaps a pot of coffee, if it’s no trouble. I haven’t slept since he went missing, you know.’

She ducked out and returned in minutes with the coffee and a plate of almond pastries. The single cup on the tray looked lonely, and he considered asking her to join him, though it wasn’t company he wanted, so much as a reassuring pat on the hand. Someone to tell him all would be well.

‘Do you need anything else?’

He shook his head and waited until he was alone before reading the lawyer’s letter again. With less than an hour before his session with Vidor, he would have to wait until later to plan his next move. His lawyers would take care of the legal side of things, but they could do nothing to heal the blow to the clinic’s exemplary record. Tainted with a reputation for negligence, who in their vulnerable state would entrust him with their care?

He poured himself a coffee and picked up the envelope Mathilde had left on his desk. The return address in Paris meant nothing to him at first, but then it came to him: the lady with the toads. He’d forgotten all about her. That he had been away from the clinic, chasing after ghosts, while Ismail hurtled towards his death, was a cross he would bear for the rest of his life.

He pulled out the letter and scanned the page… a boy who lived with the Sovànys… no idea what he was called… student at the Sorbonne, I believe… Odd that Madame Sovàny would accept a strange boy, nearly a man, as a lodger, with her young daughters in the flat… Some kind of foreigner, though he spoke French well.

Tucked inside the letter he found three postcards from the Parc Zoologique, adorned with pictures of brightly coloured tree frogs, and other crawly things. I thought of you when I saw these… aren’t they gorgeous? He shuddered and dropped the postcards in the bin. Such a remarkable woman, but he was afraid he’d opened up a can of worms, so to speak. For the rest of his days – or hers – he might become the hapless recipient of frequent mementos of her reptilian friends.