And the flash. The burst of it. A crackle, faint and distant. In the pack of black-suited men, one of them is sharp and present as she turns, as the dress flares, as his eyes glint behind a lens, curious.

Jack turns the pages of the magazine as he waits. As he often does, he sits with one hand down the front of his tracksuit bottoms. There is no one there apart from the receptionist. He wouldn’t actually wank at the GP’s, but he’s still half hard.

He’s reading Vogue. Not reading. Looking. Page after page they stand, lips parted, eyes drowsy, willing him to fuck them with their elegant dresses and shiny skin. They are polished, glistening with the sheen of a million eyes. Shoulders drop, hips jut, feet point in delicate arches. Little slivers of flesh, the narrow band between a thigh and the line of a swimsuit, the cut of a skirt high over a hip, the deep vent that billows open to the navel, covering fortuitously both flat, perfect breasts.

A sharp beep sounds. Mr Jack Fenwick Room 4.

He stands. Draws his hand from his waistband. Walks through. Rolls his shoulders as he walks, maybe more than normal. The corridor is narrow, and clean, and the smell of doctors seeps along it.

He opens the door to Room 4. Dr Flint is there. He knows Dr Flint.

‘Jack,’ says Dr Flint. ‘Sit down.’

He sits. He starts to roll up his sleeve.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Fine.’

He can feel the sweat under his arms.

Blood pressure first. Then Dr Flint asks him to look up and to one side. He peers in with a bright light, his face inches away. His skin smells bland, soaped and cleaned. Almost close enough to feel the warmth. Stubble deep-set and blue, and the faint moist heat of breath, held in politely, but seeping shallowly from his nostrils as he concentrates.

And away. Distance is restored. Needles next.

‘We’ll do all the tests today. Your eyes aren’t great. Have you been looking after yourself?’

Jack shrugs. The touch of the needle. The sharp surprise as it slides in. He looks away while the blood fills the vial. He’s been doing this for years now. He used to accept it as just part of life, but he finds himself increasingly bothered. He is alive now, adult in a way he wasn’t even three months before. When he walks to work in the morning, he notices things. He doesn’t know why, but he hears sounds in a sharper way. Tyres on the street, a conversation behind him, the rustle of leaves. He doesn’t listen to headphones when he walks anymore. He finds himself rarely less than high, and not because he’s been taking something. It’s like a switch has been flicked.

And the blood bothers him.