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I was diagnosed Asia A. Completely buggered. They didn’t tell me that. Not then.

Only the ward was real. My other life had receded to some distant place. My sanity, my compensation, was to pretend I was indeed that war correspondent on the front line, compelled to start recording this crazy story, to make sense of it to myself. Besides, it was good copy. I was finding things quite fascinating, in a rather grotesque way. By writing, I figured, I could justify my absence to my bosses at my newspaper, The Times. It’s peculiar how much of a priority this felt at the time – a measure, I suppose, of my desperate determination to hold onto something familiar and re-establish some control. Work could save me, keep me viable. At the same time, it represented escape from emotional anguish. Very few things made chronological sense to me. Unbeknownst to me, Dave came every day. Other visitors were discouraged by the hospital and he was like a Rottweiler keeping people at bay. Later I heard some of the details of events outside: Dougie had been away on an Easter ski trip in the Alps and apparently it took him a couple of days to get home; his mates performed a heroic drama-filled dash to get him to Geneva. I honestly don’t remember the moment when I first saw him at my bedside; grief and morphine have kindly erased the memory of the encounter. I hope he has forgotten too: but even now, years later, I am unable to ask him, in case I reawaken the pain. In some dark corner, I have a terrible memory of trying to give him a thumbs-up gesture with my right hand as he left, and realising with shock that I couldn’t; my thumb wouldn’t move – simultaneously realising that he had perceived the same thing. At the time I was aware only of the unbearable hurt I had inflicted on my child … and him being extraordinarily brave and composed and trying to comfort me.