‘What did they feel like?’ she says, struggling to keep her balance. Clumsy and cute at the same time. Except I’m not allowed to think about her that way now.

‘Huh?’

‘The shocks?’

I’ve tried to block out my low points, but I can’t forget how it feels to have 900 volts stopping my heart.

‘Sickening. Like someone had detonated a bomb inside me.’

Kerry looks at me closely, her blue-grey eyes as luminous as the sea in the morning light. ‘Yet you kept bringing them on. You must have been desperate, Joel.’

I turn away from her. ‘Almost as desperate as you are right now. I know your game. You’re asking me questions to put off the moment we start running. You’re scared you’ll be lapped by a junkie heart patient.’

But I bet she’s not as scared as I am. I’ve signed up to do a mini triathlon with her next month, in part as a thank you for all she’s done. But every time I’ve tried to run, in the cheap trainers and joggers they’d bought for me to wear as I detoxed, I’ve chickened out.

Part of it must be fear of another shock, I guess, even though I take my meds religiously now. But I’m scared, too, of feeling the same way I used to on the pitch, the pure joy of being fast. Because I have no right. I’ve hurt everyone. I don’t deserve anything good.

When I told Kerry I was struggling with training, she didn’t interrogate me, she just arranged to come to the beach one morning, after a night shift.

I really don’t deserve her.

But she’s here, real, and she reaches for my hand and starts to run.

I have to go with her.

She’s not a natural runner – she overpronates, the right leg twisting in. I try to pick up the pace, still holding hands, but she’s out of breath already.

Ha! Despite my crappy heart and my weak muscles, I am still Joel Greenaway. As soon as I realize that, and relax into the run, I begin to love it again.

Kerry is wrecked by the time we reach the beach huts at Hove, but if she weren’t here, I could keep going to Shoreham and back. Instead, we buy coffees from the Meeting Place and walk down to the water’s edge. I take off my dodgy trainers and feel warm pebbles under my feet. It’s unbelievable that a body I’ve tried to wreck, cell by cell, can bounce back like this.

‘Not bad for a man who has died three times, eh?’

‘I’m going to whup your ass at the swimming, though, Joel, don’t worry about that,’ she says.

The trouble with recovery is it’s not only stamina that’s coming back.

My sex drive is back, too.