She sits me on the couch. I’m so confused and overwhelmed, I don’t know how to make sense of my thoughts. I just ramble, with no idea what I’m saying. ‘I should have told someone,’ I keep repeating. ‘I should have told somebody. Winnie was right. I should have told someone.’

‘Told them what?’ Nicole presses.

‘She was being taken advantage of by one of the senior surgeons,’ I say, even now worried I’m going into too much detail. I wipe away the tears that keep forming. ‘She said not to tell anyone, and I didn’t. But I should have, shouldn’t I?’ I repress a sob. ‘Is she all right?’ I ask, trying to get myself under control. ‘Will she be all right?’

Nicole looks anxious. ‘I think so. They had to intubate her, though. I think it was pretty serious.’

I picture the Smiling Assassin lying in a hospital bed, a tube shoved down her trachea and the harsh noises of the mechanical ventilator breathing for her. I imagine her waking up to the horrible realisation she has a piece of plastic down her throat, and her coughing and spasming, trying to rip it out. It’s the natural instinct of any patient to do that. As a doctor watching that, you feel strangely removed. It wouldn’t happen to us, because we are the people who operate the machine and give the drugs and have the control and power.

I try to imagine what she was feeling before she took the valium with the intention of ending her life. I see her eyes as we stand locked in a silent battle outside the operating theatre change rooms and recall the words she spat at me. If you tell anyone about this, I’ll ruin you.

We are all just teetering on a precipice. Estelle and I have talked about the feeling of standing on a thin wire—well, it turns out the Smiling Assassin—‘Rachel’ I remind myself, using her name for the first time—was standing there right next to us, invisible. It doesn’t matter how competent she seemed in theatre or how forceful she could be on the ward. Throw into the mix the disastrous situation with the Joker and the stress of surgical training, and she’s slipping off the wire, tumbling down into the abyss.

I know why she did what she did, because I’ve been tempted myself. I’ve never reached the point of jumping, but I’ve definitely lifted one foot off the wire occasionally. I have; Estelle has; Max probably has too.

‘Can I go and visit her?’ I say, feeling a sudden urge to see for myself that she is still alive, still breathing, her heart still beating and her neurons still firing.

‘I’m sorry, but her family has said no visitors.’ Nicole looks apologetic.

I nod, breathing slowly.