I finish pouring the second shot of gin. It tastes slightly better now. I turn on my laptop, though I don’t know if I can bear to watch anything Joel has made. There’s no fixing this.

His YouTube channel has 1.3 million subscribers. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I don’t usually get time to waste watching stuff online. I click on the ‘latest’ tab, bracing myself to see the horrible rescue footage or his face.

Except there’s nothing from the crash. In fact, there are only four new videos posted in the last month – yesterday, in fact. They each have only a big white number on a black background as the thumbnail. The playlist title says:

HOW TO SAVE A LIFE – WATCH IN ORDER BUT PLEASE WATCH THEM TODAY

I click 1, despite my reservations.

When Joel’s face appears, I catch my breath. He looks exhausted. Even when I close my eyes, I see his face when they pulled me out of the stream.

He begins to talk to the camera:

‘Imagine a room with a hundred people in it: a packed pub, maybe, full of people you know and care about.

‘One by one, without warning, your friends and family members begin falling to the floor. Eventually, only six or seven are left standing.

‘That’s the truth about cardiac arrest. Without immediate help, fewer than one in ten people will survive.

‘It can happen to anyone, anywhere.

‘And the moment it does, the clock starts ticking. The heart no longer pumps blood to the brain and the body, starving them of oxygen.

‘But with the help of someone like you, many more patients could survive. Imagine thirty of those people you care about standing back up and dusting themselves down, alive and ready for their second chance.

‘It’s ordinary people like us, not doctors, who are most likely to be there when the worst happens. At work, in the park, at home, even in the pub.

‘A person’s chance of recovery depends on what happens next – starting with you.’

I watch all four videos twice over. It must be the tiredness, or the gin, but I cry before the first one is done, reliving what I did and all that’s happened since.

And though he never uses my name, in the last one it feels as if he’s speaking to me directly.

‘I said in my first video that ordinary people make the difference – but I was saved by an extraordinary person. I will never, ever stop being grateful to her or forget that it didn’t just change my history. It changed hers too. I was “down” for eighteen minutes. Those must have seemed like eighteen lifetimes to her, yet she kept going.

‘So – eighteen years too late – I want to say thank you, from the bottom of my misbehaving heart.’