I'm surprised that nobody else wondered about this.

I've seen this film a couple of times, and I've always wondered if the lecturer appearing at Emma Thompson's bedside was just a figment of her imagination?

During the flashback scene when Thompson was at University the lecturer seemed to be the same age that she was in the hospital, even though it's decades later. I know that all the scenes will have been filmed at the same time, but whoever made this film made no attempt to make the lecturer look older. She appeared exactly like Thompson would have remembered her from university.

The other thing is that you never saw anybody else there when the lecturer was next to Thompson in her bed. All the conversations between the two were unusual too. You would have expected conversations between the two to have been more matter of fact.

Just to clarify I think that the lecturer really existed at University but not at the hospital.

Did anybody else wonder about this?