He touched my hand for a moment, it was a gesture of reassurance, of recognition, before he went into the office. I sat and waited for him. I wondered what was wrong, whether he had just the virus, or any symptoms, whether his family knew or not, whether he would want to see me or not. I flicked through the pages of a woman’s magazine, and then left it down. Maybe he was here to get the results of a test, and maybe he was all right. If he came out now, I thought, and told me that he did not want to see me and did not want to talk, I would understand, I would go home on my own. I would have other things to think about. But if, on the other hand, he came out of the office and said that he wanted us to go for a walk, or a cup of coffee, have a drink together, go back to the apartment together, then, I knew, it would make all the difference to me, it would lift me in a way that I was too scared to contemplate.

I waited. I looked at my watch and realized that I had been waiting for half an hour. What could they be talking about? What could they be doing? I had been in there only ten minutes. I walked down the corridor to see if there was another way out of the office, another door, but there was not. I went back and sat down and flicked through the magazine again. I wondered if the doctor was examining him as he had examined me. I thought about Pablo without his shirt on, vulnerable as the doctor listened to his heartbeat. I hoped that he was not sick. I had no family; I could die in whatever way I pleased. I smiled to myself at the thought of that. But he had his mother and father to think about, he had to worry about when he would tell them, when they would find out. Maybe that was what he was talking to the doctor about. He had been in there for forty-five minutes. I was hungry.

When he appeared his eyes looked glazed and his manner seemed distant. Doctor Cawley came to the door and smiled at him and shook his hand and then looked at me as though it were perfectly natural for me to be still sitting there, and then he smiled at me too. I could think of nothing to smile about. Pablo and I walked silently out of the clinic and into the street.

“Have you got it as well?” Pablo asked me.

“Yes, I do,” I said.

“Have you been seeing him for long?”

“About six weeks.”

“Is that when you found out?”

“Yes.”

“It never occurred to me that you might have it as well. I was really frightened when I saw you there.”