Is it because it is cheaper? Has the credit crunch hit the Miller de Ramirez family trusts? Has the price of beef and soya fallen through the floor? Jomier will pay. He will tell Jimmy the next day that he will liquefy his pension funds and pay for Louisa to go to the US where high-powered physicians will be enticed by thoughts of silver-grey Mercedes and condos in Palm Beach to find out what is wrong with Louisa and come up with a cure. He will tell him that he should have no faith in British consultants because they are exempt from the universal law of the stick and the carrot; they are paid their fat salaries by the state whether they cure their patients or not. The smiles at the Hampton Clinic are smiles of derision at the gullible health tourists who are so easily parted from their money.

Jomier goes down to his kitchen. He starts to chop an onion for a bolognese sauce. The tang makes his eyes water; it is as if he is weeping, and all at once he is weeping. He sits on a stool, his shoulders shaking, tears wetting his cheeks. When do grown men cry? The death of a father. The death of a mother. The collapse of a marriage. And now this.

Jomier abandons the bolognese. He eats half a cheese sandwich, then goes through to his living room to watch television. He switches it on and flicks through the channels. Everything is intolerable. He switches it off. He goes upstairs. He takes a shower, changes into his pyjamas and goes to bed. It is not yet ten at night. He cannot sleep. The earlier nap in the armchair has spiked his fatigue: angry thoughts continue to ricochet in his mind. The elation he had felt earlier at the thought of sending Louisa to the US has collapsed. Even doctors enticed by the carrot of silver-grey Mercedes and condos in Palm Beach cannot cure the incurable; they cannot thwart fate.

Can fate ever be thwarted? ‘Pray for me.’ Louisa believes so. Louisa believes that there is a deity, a He Who Is who talked to Moses from a burning bush and became Homo sapiens as Jesus of Nazareth. She believes that he thwarted fate. That he cured lepers, brought Lazarus back to life and himself rose from the dead. She believes that he is God and could, if he so chose, do something for Louisa. But why should he? Why, out of the many millions who are suffering and dying, should he help Louisa? Because she believes in him? Because she is a Catholic? Don’t Catholics suffer? Don’t Catholics die?