‘I fully intend you to hear everything, Michael,’ Staff Nurse Weeks said, giving him a glacial smile before turning back to her. ‘It’s tempting for family members to pander to stroke patients when they first get them home. But you won’t be doing him any favours, Romy. Michael will just get lazy, won’t you?’ She shot him a severe look. ‘And it’ll take him much, much longer to recover.’ She paused. ‘The physios will be in every day. They’ll tell you what he is and isn’t capable of.’

‘I can bloody well tell her that, myself,’ Michael growled weakly.

The two ambulance care assistants carried the wheelchair, with Michael in it, up the curved staircase. The block had a lift, but it did not stop at the landing where his flat was situated. Getting him out again is going to be a nightmare, thought Romy, glancing back at the additional flight of steps outside the main front door, as if seeing them for the first time, despite having walked up and down them for years.

Leo opened the door and she could see the worry writ large across her son’s face as he glanced at his father in the wheelchair. Daniel stood silently behind Leo, and she took comfort from the Swiss boy’s calm presence. He will know how to handle this, she thought, as one of the ambulance assistants pressed the brake on the wheelchair with her foot and waved a cheery goodbye.

‘This is Daniel.’ Romy introduced the Swiss boy to Michael. ‘He’s going to be helping out till you’re back on your feet.’

Michael seemed dazed. He nodded tiredly but made no move to shake Daniel’s proffered hand. ‘I need to lie down,’ he said, addressing Romy.

This is worse than I thought. Romy stood looking down at the figure on the bed, his eyes closed, head resting on the linen pillowcase. Michael looked to be at death’s door, his skin sweaty and tinged with blue, his breathing laboured – she worried he wouldn’t even last the day. Can he really recover from this? she asked herself, as the three of them crept quietly away.

Romy made Leo and Daniel coffee. As they sat at the kitchen table, she saw Leo glancing at his phone and frowning as he began to type something with impressive speed.

She felt sympathy for him. ‘Work?’

Her son nodded. ‘Thirteen emails already. Fuck,’ he muttered, under his breath, then added, ‘I … sort of told them I’d be in later.’

‘Today? You’re going in today?’

Leo squirmed. ‘I really should, Mum. Dickeson is taking a dim view of me having any more time off.’

Although Romy understood, she felt a spurt of irritation at his boss and at Leo – unfair, she knew – for being so compliant. Daniel, perhaps sensing the tension, got up and rinsed his cup, then left the room, muttering about checking on Michael.