‘I’m hoping he does just that,’ Parfit returned.

Dreyfuss knew there was some undercurrent to this exchange, something they were managing to say to one another without his understanding. He slipped on the shoes. The clothes were a near-perfect fit.

‘Ready?’ said Parfit.

‘Ready,’ answered Dreyfuss.

‘I’m glad we managed to have some time together, Major,’ Stewart was saying. Dreyfuss smiled but did not reply. Parfit had already turned in the doorway, and held the door open as Dreyfuss took his first steps out of the room, into the bright, disinfected corridor.

Parfit kept a couple of steps ahead of him as they walked. Dreyfuss felt elated at first, light-headed, but then started sweating. He had paced his room, but that had called for little real exertion. Now, after sixty or so strides, his hair was prickling and his back began to feel damp. The corridor was quiet: no staff, and all the doors except his own looked to be locked tight. They came to a set of swing doors and opened them. Now they were in a larger, noisier, busier corridor, one of the hospital’s main arteries. Dreyfuss looked back at the doors they had just come through and saw that a large NO ADMITTANCE sign and a radiation symbol warned the unwary against entering his own silent corridor.

He had been expecting to see an armed guard at least. What had been stopping journalists from trying to visit him? Not just that sign, surely. Then he noticed an orderly sitting on a chair by the door, pretending to be on his break and browsing through a newspaper. His eyes were toughened glass as they fixed on Dreyfuss and Parfit, and Dreyfuss knew he was a guard of some kind, but an unobtrusive one.

‘Does he know who we are?’ he said to Parfit as they walked on.

Parfit glanced back towards the orderly. ‘Well, he knows who I am. I’ve had to get past him to see you, yesterday and today. But he’s here to stop people getting in, not coming out.’

‘What took you so long to come back?’

But Parfit was flurrying on again, and it took all of Dreyfuss’ energy and concentration to keep up with his pace. The question lapsed.

‘How much did you tell Stewart?’ Parfit asked.

‘Quite a bit.’

‘Mmm. That’s all right then.’

‘What do you mean?’ But Parfit wasn’t about to answer this question either.

Everybody was too busy being sick or being a comforter of the sick to pay them much attention, but at the main door, Dreyfuss hesitated. Something would happen. They’d be stopped. He’d be dragged back to his room and questioned again. They wouldn’t get away with it. As Parfit approached the glass doors, they opened on a motorised hush, and then both men were outside.