‘I think they are. She’s very family-minded.’

‘Well, I prayed too,’ says Jomier.

‘Thanks. It can’t have been easy.’

‘Because I don’t believe?’

‘Do you?’

‘No. But you can pray hypothetically. What if, outside the space–time continuum, there is a God? What if he hears prayers? What if he sometimes answers prayers?’

‘I’m sure a hypothetical prayer is as good as any other,’ says Louisa. ‘Perhaps better.’

‘I was reading the New Testament last night. Jesus says that his yoke is easy and his burden light, but then makes demands that are hard.’

‘What kind of demands?’

‘Repentance. Faith. Love. Forgiveness. It’s hard simply to decide to feel sorry and believe and love and forgive. Either you do or you don’t.’

Louisa frowns. ‘Surely everyone believes in something, and loves someone and feels sorry for something.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Can’t one build on that? If you know in your heart that some things are right and others wrong, that means you believe in good and evil. And if you love someone other than yourself . . .’

Jomier takes her hand. ‘I love someone much more than myself.’

‘There, you see. And you love Henry and Sam and Ned, and my children, and perhaps Sandra up to a point, and your new friend Judith . . .’

‘Up to a point.’

‘But it means that you know what it is to love.’

‘But loving you and Henry and Sam and Ned is instinctive. I love you because you are my children and grandchildren.’

‘Would you stop loving us if we weren’t?’

‘I can’t imagine not loving you.’

‘There you are.’

She lifts herself up in bed, and leans back on the pillows. ‘If you go step by step . . . If you see another little boy like Ned and think how much he is loved by his grandfather, and the little boy’s mother, and think how much she is loved by her son and her husband; and there’s the young man straightening his tie before going to an interview for his first job and it might be Henry fifteen years ago, or the girl at Heathrow setting off on her gap-year journey round the world which might have been me, then you begin to see how you can love others simply because they are fellow human beings, who love and suffer and get things wrong . . .’ Her voice tails off.

‘Like me and your mother?’

‘And others. You aren’t the only ones.’

Both are silent. Then Louisa says: ‘I asked Father Xavier . . .’

‘Who is Father Xavier?’