‘I look a bit disreputable, don’t I?’ she said with a laugh. ‘But I’ve got this.’ She took a light scarf from her bag and draped it over the spot. ‘And I’ll take a taxi. Just as soon as I know that Dong is all right.’

‘Don’t worry about him. I never saw such a healthy child.’

‘I know,’ she said with a shaky laugh. ‘He’s a rascal, I’m glad to say. No power on earth stops him getting up to mischief. He couldn’t see the highest tree in the playground without wanting to climb it.’

‘And that can be good,’ Dr Mitchell said. ‘Except that other people have to pick up the pieces, and often it is they who get hurt. I was much the same as a boy, and always in trouble for it. But I only recall my teachers reproving me, not risking their own safety to rescue me.’

‘If he’d been seriously hurt, how could I have faced his mother?’

‘But he isn’t seriously hurt, because he had a soft landing on top of you.’

‘Something like that,’ she said ruefully. ‘But nothing hurts me. I just bounce. And I should be getting him back to school soon, or he’ll be late going home.’

‘What about when you go home?’ he asked. ‘Is there anyone there to look after you?’

‘No, I live alone, but I don’t need anyone to look after me.’

He paused a moment before saying, ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t be too confident of that.’

‘Why not?’

‘It-can sometimes be dangerous.’

She wanted to ask him what he meant. The air was singing as though two conversations were happening together. Beneath the conventional words, he was speaking silently to a part of her that had never listened before, and it was vital to know more. She drew a breath, carefully framing a question…

‘Here I am,’ came a cheerful voice.

Suddenly she was back on earth, and there was Dong, trotting into the room, accompanied by the nurse with the X-ray.

‘Excellent,’ Dr Mitchell said in a voice that didn’t sound quite natural to Olivia’s ears. But nothing was natural any more.