‘You lightweight, you only just got here!’ he calls out, the way he always does when I drink softs or leave a club early the night before a match, and it’s like the old days when we took the piss out of each other all the time. But his face changes, suddenly fearful. ‘Are you sick?’

‘Nah. This isn’t my scene.’

‘Mine neither, but once they’ve got through a few crates, they’ll be . . . friendlier.’ Ant winks at me. It’s not even eight weeks since I had that thing put in, and I’m meant to be getting back to normal: being the old Joel, the one who pulls girls without trying, and has random Dolphins fans buying me drinks in clubs and telling me I’m the future of the team.

Mostly, I feel like that Joel is dead. But when Kerry walked in, my body responded like it used to. I wanted her.

She’s not mine to want. I’ve already had too much from her. She visits me with Ant, and tells jokes and makes me do my exercises and eat healthy food. I know I ought to be working even harder at building myself up, but it’s hard to see the point of the protein and veg I used to mainline because my perfect diet didn’t protect me.

‘Want me to come out, Banana Man, help you get a cab?’ Ant asks, even though he’s the only one behind the bar.

Fury rises from nowhere. What, I can’t even be trusted to get a fucking taxi now? I close my eyes. Don’t hate him, he’s your best mate, he only wants you to be OK.

‘I’m not an invalid,’ I say. Still rude, but nowhere near as nasty as what I wanted to say.

The music changes. That bloody awful Westlife song, ‘Flying Without Wings’. Enough.

Out on the blustery seafront, the anger is whipped away with my breath and I look for the lights of a taxi.

It’s past two, and I’m making toast in the kitchen to take back to the den when someone knocks on the door.

In the porch light, Kerry looks like the dancer on the top of my mother’s musical jewellery box.

‘You left,’ she says.

‘Sorry. Tired.’ It’s my get-out-of-jail-free card. No one challenges someone who died for eighteen minutes.

Her forehead wrinkles in a cute frown. ‘You don’t look tired. Can I come in? I’m not ready to go to bed.’

Bed. A flash of her in my bed, naked.

She stumbles on the doorstep and falls towards me, and when I catch her, I feel the strength in my arms, the sharp reflex that helps me stop her from hurting herself. Her face is so close to mine, I want to kiss her but . . .