It’s a ritual we’ve adopted at the end of a run of nights. Tim’ll do us a cooked breakfast, and we’ll sit and chat. This morning it’s warm enough to eat in the garden, which also means we won’t risk waking Elaine as we talk. It looks better out here: I talked the builders who fixed the subsidence to throw in some patio slabs for free.

He brings out the plates and I tell him the story, though I leave out the part about it reminding me of Joel. I know how Kylie feels.

‘It’s incredible that you’re saving lives while I’ve barely scratched the surface of a cadaver.’

‘Not when I’m about to eat!’ It’s a joke, because I’m not actually squeamish. As I cut into my first egg, the perfect runny yolk pours onto my toast. He gets it right every time now, even though he couldn’t cook at all when I moved in.

He hasn’t learned for my sake. His girlfriend Laura probably gets breakfast in bed when he stays at her halls. She never stays overnight here. His mother approves of her because she’s also a med student, but Tim tells me he couldn’t bear to do that under her roof.

‘Is Laura back from the States on Saturday?’

He shrugs. ‘Sunday, I think. If I get up in time, I might fetch her from the airport or something. Though Heathrow is a bit of a trek.’

‘You old romantic.’

He blushes. It’s weird, us both dating. Nice weird. We’ve had great chats about Laura, and about Andy the paramedic – until he dumped me last month, that is. It didn’t hurt, which was a relief, but also . . . I dunno, I’m worried I’ll never feel that intensity again, the way I felt about—

‘I should try to talk myself into picking her up, I guess. I think she’d be very grateful . . .’ He peters off, grinning. Is he imagining how grateful? For all our discussions about life, death, medicine and the nitty-gritty of us both dealing with his mum’s personal care, we don’t discuss our sex lives.

‘I’m sure she’ll have missed you.’ I hear something barbed in my voice. It’s been strange, ceding territory to this girl I am not sure deserves my best friend.

We sit and eat and all seems well with the world: the birds sing and the clouds pass across the autumn-blue sky and I think, I am happy again. My life here is good, in a way I couldn’t have imagined a year ago.