You are in the kitchen getting a bottle of wine out of the fridge or in the garden waging a new offensive against snails, or driving out to dinner, me next to you, bemoaning traffic jams and praising sat-navs. You belong next to me on the sofa and on the right-hand side of our bed, moving slowly in the night towards mine. Even your appearances on TV in a jungle on the other side of the world are watched by me and the children on our family squashy sofa; the foreign mediated through the familiar.

You didn’t belong here.

Jenny ran to you and put her arms around you, but you didn’t know she was there and hurried on, half running up to the reception desk, your stride jerky with shock.

‘My wife and daughter are here, Grace and Jenny Covey.’

For a moment the receptionist reacted, she must have seen you on the telly, and then she looked at you with sympathy.

‘I’ll bleep Dr Gawande, and he’ll come to get you straight away.’

Your fingers drummed on the counter, your eyes flicking around; a cornered animal.

The journalists hadn’t yet spotted you. Maybe that mask over your old face had foxed them. Then Tara, my ghastly colleague at the Richmond Post, made a beeline towards you. As she reached you she smiled. Smiled.

‘Tara Connor. I know your wife.’

You ignored her, scanning the room and seeing a young doctor hastening towards you.

‘Dr Gawande?’ you said.

‘Yes.’

‘How are they?’ Your quiet voice was screaming.

Other journalists had seen you now and were coming towards you.

‘The consultants will be able to give you a fuller picture,’ Dr Gawande said. ‘Your wife has been taken to have an MRI scan and will then return to our acute neurology ward. Your daughter has been taken to our burns unit.’

‘I want to see them.’

‘Of course. I’ll take you to your daughter first. You can see your wife as soon as she’s finished her MRI, which will be in about twenty minutes.’