He asked: “Is she conscious?

Did she say anything?”

I felt the cold move all the way down my spine, because in that one question the whole thing was laid bare.

A frightened husband wants to know if his wife will be all right.

Luca wanted to know if she had spoken — whether she had woken, and named him, and whether the perfect accident he had engineered was about to acquire a witness.

His concern was not for her survival.