Normal. It was all so normal.

Adam could have been drifting in his consciousness through Belgium, Italy, Thailand. All the places he’d dreamed he’d go. Instead he is at home with me. A child still on the way.

And we are happy. The version of us who are excited and hopeful and preparing to be parents.

On some level, in Adam’s mind, we are together and we are happy.

Chapter Forty-Five

Oliver

Anna is pale. Agitated as she twists the corner of the tissue in her hand into a sharp point before dabbing at the blood still leaking from her nose.

‘We couldn’t see anything on the screen,’ Oliver says again.

‘I’m not making it up,’ Anna insists. ‘I can see how you might think I’d be so desperate to talk to Adam again I might have fabricated it all, but I didn’t. I was back at home and everything was… normal.’

Oliver scratches notes on his pad. Usually he’d type on his laptop but the way his computer had let him down by failing to record the trial had left a desire to go back to basics. Computer readings were often wrong or missing during trials, but it didn’t make it any easier knowing that.

‘If I’d imagined it,’ Anna says, ‘I wouldn’t have imagined it that way. There was a point when we were bickering the way we used to but… I was there. He was there.’ Anna’s expression is so earnest that Oliver believes her. The computer may not have recorded it, but it has worked. Despite his years of research, Oliver is staggered that it has. On the outside he is composed, studiously documenting Anna’s account of her journey, but on the inside he is singing. Dancing. Frothing open the champagne. This is revolutionary. He has built a bridge between the subconscious and the conscious. It really will change lives.

Clem would be so proud of him. She’d also tell him he should be looking after Anna. Oliver feels a pang of shame as he notices the droop of her eyes. The yawn she’s stifling.

‘Do you want to go and have a lie down?’ he asks.

‘Yes, please.’ She stands, her shoulders rounded as she begins to shuffle away. ‘Oliver?’ She turns, their eyes meet and then hers flicker away from his. For a second he is tense. Certain she is going to ask for arrangements to be made for Adam to be flown home. Instead she says, ‘How soon can we repeat this?’ He relaxes.

‘Luis will check Adam over again and you need another physical and to talk to Eva. I want to be certain that there are no delayed reactions and we’ll take it from there, okay?’

‘Okay. But… when?’