My husband left his medication at home, so I stopped by his office to bring it to him. But when I asked the receptionist to call him downstairs, she said, "Ma'am, your husband has been on leave for the past week."

My sister has been coming to those Thursdays since the end of July.

Not from the start. He did the first seven weeks on his own.

He rang her on the twenty-ninth of July.

She can date it exactly, because it was her son's birthday weekend and she took that call standing in a garden with about eleven people in it.

He asked her whether she would sit in a waiting room with him.

That is exactly how he put it, and she has quoted it back to me twice.

Not will you come with me. Not I need you. Not I'm ill.

Would you sit in a waiting room.

And my sister — who I had not spoken to in three and a half years at that point, who had not been in my house since 2021 —

said yes inside about four seconds.

And then she went back into that garden and did not tell one single person, and has not in eleven Thursdays.