‘They’re going to move me,’ I tell her on Friday. Or is it Saturday? No, I’d know in my bones if it was match day.

‘About time. You don’t belong in here with this lot.’ She looks over her shoulder at the other patients, who are mostly out of it. ‘I mean, they’re not great conversationalists.’

‘Neither am I, Kerry. I kick a ball and grunt occasionally, and I didn’t pass a single exam.’ Not that I’ve ever cared about exams. All that matters to me is football.

Kerry laughs. ‘You don’t need GCSEs to be a mega-star and the nearest our school had to a pin-up.’

I realize she’s blushing. Why would she blush when she’s paying me a compliment? My brain feels foggy as I try to work out what I should say next. Am I meant to say, No, I’m not that good? Because that would be a lie. I am good. I really bloody am.

The silence has gone on a bit too long and I’m in danger of saying something that proves what a dickhead I am. Since I woke up from the coma, I can’t always control what comes out of my mouth. Before, I found it easy to get on with people, have a laugh. Kerry is wrong: I’m not still me. The new me is unpredictable and rude. A stranger. I hate it.

My nurse, a dark-humoured blond-haired giant from the Czech Republic, comes into view.

‘I’m hoping it’ll be livelier on the cardiology ward. That’s where I’m going, right, Vaclav? Can’t wait.’

‘You’ll miss us when you’re gone. This place is like first class on the aeroplane. Downstairs it’s economy, no more one-to-one VIP service. And the view is not five-star.’

The view is the one thing I like about ICU: I feel like I’m in a helicopter that hovers over the city. Vaclav has moved my bed so I can see the beach and two piers floating on top of the grey water.

‘The main thing is it means they think you’re getting better,’ Kerry says.

I shrug, which bloody hurts. When Tim visited me, he explained it was because he must have bruised my ribs when he gave CPR. I banned him from visiting again because he’s to blame for the pain that comes when I breathe or twist or laugh. ‘I don’t think there was anything wrong with me in the first place.’

She leans in and I can smell the flowery perfume my first girlfriend used to wear. Weird. I’ve never seen Kerry as a girly girl. Or as a girl at all. ‘There must have been. People our age don’t drop dead for no reason, there has to be a cause and they need to find it. We’ve talked about this, Joel—’