‘People who work in law firms and design agencies get stressed. People who work in palliative care get distressed.’

Kate shook her head, feeling frustrated. She had come here for answers, but all Holly was giving her were metaphors and euphemisms. Kate wanted to slap her, to tell her to just talk like a human being, but instead she took a breath and asked, ‘What was the leaf that dammed the stream?’

Holly leaned back in her chair and sipped her green tea. ‘Did John ever mention Annabel?’

Kate shook her head.

‘Annabel was John’s patient. Mid-sixties – far too young to be in here. Advanced stages of PF – pulmonary fibrosis. It’s a chronic and degenerative disease where lung tissue becomes scarred and stiff, which makes it hard to breathe and get enough oxygen into the bloodstream. There’s no cure and plenty of causes. She’d been undergoing radiation treatment for lung cancer. She was a smoker. The radiation killed the cancer, but it gave her PF. The universe can be cruel sometimes. Annabel and John were very fond of each other. You’re not supposed to have favourites, but sometimes you find someone you just click with, and when that happens, it’s impossible not to feel their passing.’

‘And that’s what happened?’

‘When Annabel died, John took a dark turn,’ Holly said, nodding. ‘This sort of thing is accumulative, but if I had to trace it back, Annabel’s death was the leaf that dammed the stream. After that, he became distant. Cold. He started eating lunch in his car, snapping at the nursing staff. A wall went up.’

‘What happened next?’ Kate asked.

‘I reminded him I was here to talk, but if his work performance kept suffering, then we’d need to have a more serious conversation. He handed in his resignation letter the following day.’

Guilt drifted in like a bank of fog. Kate’s husband had been in distress and, somehow, she hadn’t noticed.

Passive to the point of invisible, Fisher had called her. The accuracy of it stung. It wasn’t just with John either: she had been that woman at work, was maybe still that woman in her friendship groups and on the school council – working to realise other people’s bold visions. She was the agreeable assistant, the easy-going supporter, the designated driver. It kept her safe. It meant that she had spent the better part of the past two decades living inside a cocoon. It was a comfortably appointed cocoon, warm and safe, and she would have been happy to stay there forever. But since the airport, since the police station, since hearing John mourned the loss of a woman she never knew existed, the walls of her cocoon had been weakening. What would emerge from within?