The doctor was not unsympathetic. There is, he said, next year. When your body’s had an opportunity to heal. We’ll look at all the options then. In vitro. Fertility drugs. Everything else. We’ll do all the tests we can. In a year.

So dutifully she began with the pills. But when Simon brought home the adoption forms, she drew the line on cooperation.

There was absolutely no point in thinking of it now. She forced herself to study the cartoon. The faces were serene, she decided.

They seemed well-defined. The rest of the piece was largely impression, drawn like a series of questions that would remain forever unanswered. Would the Virgin’s foot be raised or lowered? Would St. Anne continue to point towards the sky? Would the Infant’s plump hand cradle the Baptist’s chin? And was the background Golgotha, or was that a future too unsavoury for this moment of tranquillity, something better left unsaid and unseen?

“No Joseph. Yes. Of course. No Joseph.”

Deborah turned at the whisper and saw that a man — still fully dressed for the out-of-doors in a great wet overcoat with a scarf round his neck and a trilby on his head — had joined her. He didn’t seem to notice her presence and had he not spoken she probably wouldn’t have noticed his. Dressed completely in black, he faded into the farthest corner of the room.

“No Joseph,” he whispered again, resigned.

Rugby player, Deborah thought, for he was tall and looked hefty beneath his coat. And his hands, clasping a rolled-up museum plan in front of him like an unlit candle, were square and blunt fingered and fully capable, she imagined, of shoving other players to one side in a dash down the fi eld.

He wasn’t dashing anywhere now, although he did move forward, into one of the muted cones of light. His steps seemed reverential. With his eyes on the da Vinci, he reached for his hat and removed it as a man might do in church. He dropped it onto one of the benches. He sat.