Today he seemed pleased to see her, raising his good hand to take hers when she reached the bed. Someone had shaved him and put his pyjamas on, and he looked a bit more like his normal self. Her husband had always been striking rather than handsome. A lean man of average height, he had begun shaving his head decades ago, after he’d cut it open getting off a faulty ski lift, then decided he preferred the look. It accentuated his high cheekbones and large dark eyes, his Roman nose – inherited from his Venetian grandmother – and made him stand out among the more conservatively presented judiciary. But now his exposed skull just made him look ancient.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I brought you some chicken broth.’ She placed the Thermos on the bed table, moving aside the inevitable grapes and a pile of books brought in optimistically by Leo, none of which Michael had even glanced at. ‘Bit of a cliché, but you’ve always been fond of my soup and I’m sure the food in here is shit.’

Michael nodded and smiled. ‘I’m very fond of … things you cook,’ he said slowly, obviously searching for words, the meaning hard to glean from his mangled speech. Then, to Romy’s horror, she noticed a single tear course down his cheek. Then another.

‘Michael?’ She stroked his hand, finding a tissue in a box on his bedside locker and handing it to him. The tears stopped almost as soon as they’d started.

Michael gave her a weak smile. ‘Not sure … why that … why I …’ he mumbled, appearing bewildered rather than embarrassed. Romy had rarely seen him cry, not even when his beloved mother had died. It shocked her that he was so disarmed; it touched her heart.

‘Shall I pour you some soup?’ she asked, to cover her own emotion.

He shook his head, but she couldn’t understand the words he was trying to articulate.

The afternoon wore on and there was no sign of the boys or Anezka. Michael’s long-time colleague and friend, James Bregman, with whom he shared chambers, dropped in, clutching a lavish, dewy bunch of flowers, which he waved vaguely around, and finally laid on Michael’s bed.

‘Thanks, these are gorgeous,’ Romy said, after she’d greeted James. ‘But I’m not sure they allow flowers on the ward, these days.’

His expression fell and he looked ill at ease – although James was not someone easily discomposed – as he hopped from foot to foot in his expensively tailored suit, his plump, fair face flushed. ‘Sorry, didn’t think …’ He stared at Michael’s sleeping figure. ‘Bit of bad luck this, eh?’ As if his friend had just lost on the horses.