Dawn is almost here by the time they let me in to the same unit where I came back to life.

Is that a sign? Miracles do happen.

‘Oh, Zoë.’

She’s breathing but unconscious. Probably good, because I’m crying at the sight of her. Not because of the machines and the monitors, but because of what she’s become: wizened, old before her time.

When I was on drugs, people used to pass me on the street or the beach and you could see the disgust at what I’d done to myself, the loss of dignity. Yet it was different for me. Even at my lowest ebb, I could have gone home, asked my parents to help me.

But Zoë was rejected and left to fend for herself, right from when she was a baby. She survived on cheek and cunning and that amazing gift for mimicry.

There’s a tube in her throat to help her breathe, and I want to wrench it out so I can hear one of her accents when – if – she comes round: her cheeky Cockney, her Spanish cabaret singer, even the hospital official she pretended to be when she called all those Christmases ago to tell me I was a dad . . .

I swallow the lump in my throat. ‘Hey, Zoë. I didn’t know you were back in town. You should have called. There’s someone who would really, really love to meet you.’

She doesn’t respond.

‘She may well be able to hear you,’ the ICU nurse who’s walking by tells me.

‘Really?’ I didn’t hear a thing when I was in my coma, but that doesn’t mean Zoë won’t.

The nurse beckons me to step away from the bed and when she speaks again, it’s in a whisper. ‘It’s one of the last senses to go.’

I let this sink in. ‘Does that mean she’s dying?’ My own voice stays low, so there’s no risk of Zoë hearing the question.

The nurse looks at me steadily. ‘The surgeon told you the risks? Shock is the main concern, but also organ failure from when she was bleeding before we operated. We are managing it all as aggressively as possible but that comes with its own dangers.’

‘Right.’ I get a chair and go back to Zoë. It’s past 6 a.m. but something about the lighting around the bed reminds me of bedtime stories with Leo every night, before he grew out of it. I reach to touch a part of her arm that’s visible between wires and tubes and the hospital nightgown. It surprises me that she’s warm, though it shouldn’t. She’s alive, still.