Claire tells him about Patience. She explains her mother’s unhappiness about the situation, her brother’s unavailability to help. When she’s finished, Jerome says, ‘My father had a synthetic. He had dementia with Lewy bodies – which nobody’s ever heard of, it’s like the rarest thing – and all these calcium crystal diseases, where he had crystals building up in his joints, and gallstones, and stuff like that. He was deaf. I had to teach, I couldn’t be home all the time, and he couldn’t be left on his own. The synthetic was great. She just got on with it, no problem. She didn’t care if he was yelling about home invaders or trying to show her his dick.’

‘My mother’s not like that.’

‘I think it’s amazing what you do. Absolutely amazing. I couldn’t do it. I literally could not do it.’

‘Don’t you feel guilty?’

Jerome looks out of the window. Solemnly he says, ‘My father passed. He was seventy-eight years old. And no, I wasn’t there – but what I try to tell myself is, neither was he.’

They say goodbye on the pavement, an awkward hug, a promise to write. Then she goes back to her apartment and finishes packing. As she is dragging her bags down the stairwell, her phone buzzes with a text from the psychiatry museum: ‘Hi Claire! Thank you for volunteering with us today! See you at 4pm!’

She is not in the mood, not in the slightest; she wishes bitterly she’d been called to volunteer earlier in her stay. Could she simply not go? She supposes she could. Other people flake out on their obligations. But Claire has always been dutiful. She will take her bags with her and ask to store them behind the desk. She will do this one last thing.

The compulsory chair has been removed from the main exhibition hall and placed in the former chancel for the Living Museum. It stands spotlit in the middle of the floor, the dramatic lighting making the burnished leather and the wooden wings shine. Claire swings her legs up on to the leg-rests and settles back. The spotlight closes her eyes.

‘OK?’ asks the museum assistant, Mikke, a bony young man with his hair slicked over to one side and a walkie-talkie crackling responsibly on his belt. He has already told her he will be there the whole time, and if she wants letting out, she only has to call his name. He has to say this for insurance reasons, just as he has to make her sign a waiver that will never be used.

‘I’m gonna fasten the straps now, OK?’

‘Then what do I do?’

‘Whatever you like.’

‘Do I talk to people?’

‘If you like. Or go into your head. It’s up to you.’