After letting the receptionist know, the two friends went outside for some air. They paced the pavement in silence, until a man appeared before them, with his head and face swathed in gauze, except for a gap around his eyes. He was wearing a T-shirt, underpants and some knee-high circulation socks, visible through his open dressing gown. He seemed to be in his thirties, but his legs were rigid, and he moved forward with great difficulty.

‘Jesus, that poor man,’ said Lucy, after asking to go back inside.

‘Don’t worry, we won’t let you out of the hospital looking like that,’ said Olivia.

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

‘At least do my dressing gown up.’

‘You got it,’ said Olivia.

They had barely sat down on one of the black, steel-framed sofas in the reception area, when they heard Lucy’s name being called and saw, across the hall, a smiling man in blue scrubs, leaning out of his office door.

Mr McEwan welcomed them into his room. He was in his fifties with buzz-cut hair and eyes that matched his scrubs. He sat at his desk and swivelled his computer screen so they could all see.

‘So, I have the images from your MRI here.’ He pulled up a file that contained numerous black and white pictures of Lucy’s tumour, shot from many angles. He scrolled through them for a while, seeming to be so fascinated by the penetrative power of the technology that he forgot that there were other people in the room. On every image, a large white blob appeared at the top of the skull. McEwan eventually turned his chair away from the screen to face Lucy, like someone looking up from an engrossing novel to deal with a practical enquiry.

‘What I ask myself when I look at you is why you look so healthy and why you’re in such great shape? Why are your physical symptoms not more severe?’

‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Lucy. ‘You seem to be giving me a compliment and a death sentence in one blow: how can I seem so well considering how unwell I really am. Is that it?’

‘The border is very well defined,’ said McEwan. ‘If it were a glioblastoma, it would probably have bled out more into the rest of the brain and produced much more severe symptoms by now, but there is no way of knowing unless we do a biopsy. Also, you see the vascularisation here at the centre?’ He pointed with his pen towards what looked like two tiny clouds that were more brightly lit up than the rest of the tumour. ‘That makes me worry that it could be higher grade.’

‘So, what would the biopsy entail?’ asked Olivia, who could see that Lucy was close to tears and unable to speak.