Three years on, Alastair and Charlotte are still on dialysis, waiting for kidney transplants. Louisa was not so badly affected. In probably the most highly charged transaction of his life, Evans received a kidney from his only daughter, Lauren, last month because his heart was under strain from five hours of dialysis three times a week. “I was told the average lifespan on dialysis is five to eight years,” he says. “I had done three and my heart was starting to cause trouble.” Until then, he’d been reluctant to be helped by his daughter – a zoologist in her late twenties – even though her blood group was found to be a match. “Your natural instinct is never to do anything to harm your kids – although the statistics show there is only a tiny, tiny risk to the donor.” By her persistence, and after exhaustive research on his part, she finally persuaded him to accept.