Sylvie was sitting up in bed. She was wearing dark blue pyjamas and cherry-red lipstick. The collected works of Poe was open on her lap but she was looking out the window. She turned her face when I closed the door behind me and smiled at me.

‘Hello, darling,’ she said. ‘You’ve heard about my accident then?’

‘It’s an accident now?’ I crossed the room to her side and took her by both arms. ‘Don’t lie to me.’

‘I’m not.’

I wanted to shake her. ‘I saw Edie.’

‘Oh.’ Her smile widened.

‘You said you wanted to go.’

‘It was all the drugs talking – I took too many sleeping pills by mistake.’ She shrugged off my hands.

I sat down on the bed and dropped my head into my hands. I could feel the sweat cooling around my hairline, and my heart slowly returning to normal. I could have cried with relief. Edie had made a mistake – Sylvie was fine, cheerful, even.

‘You promise it was an accident?’

‘Of course.’

I turned to look at her. ‘You can’t leave us.’

‘And why not?’

‘Because we want you around.’ Her hands were lying on the bedcover, and I put my right over her left. ‘Doesn’t that make life worth living?’

‘Silly boy.’ Her voice was warm. ‘Our life out here isn’t real, is it?’

‘That doesn’t mean you can’t carry on.’

‘But what are you carrying on for?’ She drew up her knees and hugged them to her chest. ‘You can’t understand it – you’re not a woman. We have this thing inside us that makes us alive, it makes us love, it makes babies; it makes us special. But it doesn’t last forever, not like the thing inside a man that makes him alive. So we know at some point, when something isn’t really living, it isn’t real, it’s best to let it go.’

‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’

She closed her eyes. ‘Freddie would know how to put it. Maybe I’ll ask him to write it down in his next letter.’

I felt my heart sink. She opened her eyes and smiled at me. ‘He always knows what to say, doesn’t he?’

‘He does.’

I kissed her hair, and she rested her cheek against my shoulder.

‘I’m going to sleep now. Will you stay?’

‘Try to keep me away.’

‘Lie next to me then.’

She turned onto her right-hand side. I shifted to lie behind her, and fitted my body into her curves. I could feel her heartbeat; when she fell asleep I laid the back of my hand against her cheek where her eyelashes grazed it.

I kissed her hair. ‘It’s going to be alright,’ I whispered, and she frowned in her sleep.