‘This week?’ Romy shook her head. She couldn’t think, couldn’t focus, couldn’t decide what she should worry about first. Because even while understanding perfectly well that Michael was coming home, being responsible for the care of such a damaged person still seemed a bit unreal, something that would happen eventually but not yet, not so soon. It reminded her of the terror of bringing Leo home, two days after he was born. She’d been convinced that without the nurses’ reassuring support she would do something dreadful and the vulnerable little bundle in her arms would suffer. Michael wasn’t a baby, obviously, but he was perhaps equally vulnerable.

‘They’re sending someone round to assess the flat, tell us what equipment we need,’ Leo said. ‘Like grab rails for the shower and a seat, so he can sit when he’s washing.’

‘And Anezka?’

Leo shrugged. ‘I doubt she’ll stick around once he’s home.’

‘So sad for your father,’ Romy said.

For a moment they didn’t speak. Rex messed with some spilt coffee and drew it across the table in a figure of eight. Romy wanted to slap his hand away, as she would have done when he was a child, but she stopped herself.

‘Well, boys,’ she said, straightening her shoulders and summoning every ounce of strength in her body, ‘looks like it’s down to us. So we’d better get on with it.’ Finch’s military master plan rang in her ears. She would do this. She would make it work for them all. And she would try not to think about all the things she was missing out on at home, try not to worry about how her defection would impact on her burgeoning relationship with Finch.

18

When Romy glanced at Bettina, she saw her friend shake her head slightly, her eyes narrowing with disapproval.

Romy didn’t need her friend’s help, though, when it came to Magda. The Hungarian woman, in her fifties, was charmless and tough. She would probably be very efficient – there was nothing she didn’t know about strokes – but not necessarily kind.

When the woman had been dispatched, Romy flopped down next to Bettina and sighed.

‘That’s the fourth. They’re all so …’ She cast her mind back through the people she’d interviewed.

‘Grim?’ Bettina offered, pulling a face as she flicked her blonde fringe off her tanned face. She ran an upmarket bakery in Hastings with her Swiss husband, Jost, but she’d taken Thursday off to help choose a live-in carer for Michael.

‘I’m trying to put myself in Michael’s position, imagine myself in bed, feeling rough, and the door opens and in walks Magda.’

They started to giggle.

‘It might motivate him to get out of bed really, really quickly.’

‘Or send him straight back under the duvet.’

They fell into a subdued silence.