‘There are no happy endings, Max. Whatever we do. Whatever lies we tell. Whoever we hurt. It’s not meant to be for you and me. And you know it’s true.’

‘I just want a triple espresso,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t deny a man a triple espresso, would you?’

She shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’

‘But first I have to do something. Pat Whitestone’s son is coming home today. Will you wait for me?’

She touched my hand and smiled at last. ‘Please, Max,’ she said. ‘Go.’

*  *  *

I waited outside the main doors of the Whittington Hospital, alone apart from a hollow-eyed man in his dressing gown sucking on a cigarette like it contained the only air on the planet.

I was expecting Pat and Justin to come out with some kind of farewell committee of doctors and nurses, but they came through the big glass doors alone, Justin in dark glasses, his mother lightly guiding his arm, the pair of them the same height now, Whitestone holding a small suitcase and a paper bag from the pharmacy. They seemed to move in careful slow motion, adjusting to this new reality. Neither of them said much and what they did say concerned the practicalities of getting into the big BMW X5 that I had parked in a doctor’s bay, the diesel engine running in case I had to move it.

And then I drove them home. From the Whittington Hospital, at the north end of the Holloway Road, to their two-bedroom flat in Islington, at the other end of that road, the kebab shops slowly making way for cafés and the junk shops for antique emporiums as we got closer to the Angel.

I drove. That’s all I did. It didn’t feel like much. In fact, it felt like nothing. I wanted to do more. I wanted to say something to Pat Whitestone that she could hold when she went forward. But I drove in silence, watching the teenage boy in his dark glasses in the back seat with his small, fair-haired, bespectacled mother, the traffic sluggish on the Holloway Road, and all of their new lives before them.

Whitestone helped Justin to his bedroom and when she returned to the living room I told her the only thing that I had to offer.

‘Tara Jones talked to me about being deaf,’ I said. ‘She told me that the way she had always dealt with it was by acting as if she had a difficulty and not a disability.’ I shook my head. ‘I know it’s easier said than done, Pat.’