They must be more resilient than they look, she’d thought then. It must happen all the time, birds flying straight into windows.

The director was waiting for him outside the lab. He wasn’t even particularly surprised. She held out her hand, and he shook it.

‘Dr Quentin,’ she said. ‘James. Let’s talk.’

She led him to the lift and up to her office, where the chairman and the chief scientific officer were already seated. But James was hardly present at all; he was decades away, telling Avigail he was going to leave his job. Telling Avigail he loved her.

‘You do understand,’ the director said, ‘that we need some confidentiality here. For the sake of the customers, the parents …’

He nodded.

‘And the research, in the wrong hands, could be dangerous.’

The director was not a woman he knew well, but he knew her enough to believe that she was a decent sort of person. Her speeches, at public events or staff parties, were self-deprecating, warm, and brief. He appreciated all three. She often toured the labs and wanted to talk to the staff, not just the heads of groups, but the students and technicians. She listened to them with genuine interest. She was not a scientist, but she believed in science – he was sure of that.

The CSO was talking about his research now.

‘Your colleagues tell us …’ he was saying.

So Bethan had been talking about him behind his back. He wasn’t surprised. She was ambitious. She was better than him too – she could have his job and be welcome to it. He didn’t care.

‘… that you’ve been getting upset,’ he continued. ‘Leaving the lab hurriedly. Getting … squeamish?’

‘You sent me a dead baby,’ he said softly, though it was intended to provoke.

‘Of course that was upsetting,’ said the director. ‘And insensitive. It was my fault – I knew there was a rush.’ She smiled in a way that made him wonder if she’d been eager to pass it on, if she hadn’t wanted it on her hands any more than he had.

‘But even before that,’ she carried on, ‘I understand there were some problems.’

He was starting to wish they’d just get on with it. He didn’t want to be here any more. Why had it taken him all these years to realise that he didn’t want to be here?

‘Can we move this along?’ he said.

She raised her eyebrows, and he did the same – taken aback at his own rudeness. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

‘I’ll go quietly …’ he said.

The three of them exchanged glances, but it was the chairman who spoke, for the first time.

‘We don’t want you to go anywhere,’ she said, with a smile.

‘We want to offer you some counselling,’ said the director. ‘To help you through … We know your field is a stressful one.’

‘Are you all mad?’