By the time Dr Lawson and the others come back into the room I’ve composed myself. I know what they’re going to ask about: the event corroborated by Max and now, from the grave, by Dr Rachel Copeland. After warning me that if I told anyone she would ruin me, she’d then killed herself—but not before writing a letter naming me as a witness to her own ruin.

‘When Rachel writes about “what you saw that night”, what exactly is she referring to?’ Dr Lawson asks me straight out, after I’ve reassured her that I am okay to continue with the meeting.

There’s no point prevaricating now. ‘I heard her in the change room with him,’ I say tersely, gesturing at the Joker. ‘And when she came out she looked like she’d been crying. Through the whole thing he was calling her a slut and other gross things.’ I shudder.

‘Exactly what Max heard,’ Dr Lawson says.

Max and I both nod.

‘But neither of you realised that the other was there.’

‘No,’ we both say at the same time.

The Joker immediately starts to bluster. ‘She can’t talk,’ he says, glaring at me. ‘She’s been having an affair with Jack Prince.’

Dr Lawson looks at me with interest.

‘That’s a lie,’ I say.

Dr Lawson catches my eye and I think I see the flicker of a smile hover on her lips before it is replaced with a grimace. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, David,’ she says firmly. ‘I know Dr Prince well. I’m close friends with his wife.’

I vaguely remember a story about Dr Lawson having an affair with her boss when she was his registrar and twenty years his junior, but no one talks about that anymore. They just say that she and her husband met at work and their attraction for each other must have overcome the age gap.

Guess I’m in good company, I think to myself wryly.

The discussion moves on to an internal investigation of the Joker. Realising our presence is no longer required, Max and I both rise and head towards the door.

‘Actually, Katarina,’ Dr Lawson calls after me, ‘there’s one more thing.’

I turn around.

‘Dr Copeland left another note,’ she says. ‘The police have it now—it was in the pocket of her scrubs, which she left in her locker—but I wrote down the words.’ She opens her file and leafs through it, pulling out a slip of paper. ‘Her parents didn’t know what this meant. Does it make any sense to you?’ She reads: ‘Isis Moriendo Renascor.’

In my mind’s eye, I see a phoenix perched on a bone, and a young woman smiling with a glass of wine in her hand in front of sea so blue it looks like something out of a film. A surgeon, but still an actress, bowing out with her final line.