‘We’re waiting till after my finals. July 2005. Save the date.’ He laughs. ‘Actually, don’t save the date. I don’t think you’ll be invited. Though the final guest list will be Kerry’s department. She’s already planning it all.’

I can’t imagine my Kerry getting excited about bouquets or dresses. But I can’t imagine her saying yes to marrying Tim either.

‘Anyway, Joel, that’s not why I came. I did without . . . help while I was in India, despite being in the middle of a conflict zone. So I’ve realized I don’t need pills any more.’

‘Seriously? It’s not easy to come off some of the stuff you’ve been taking.’ And if he quits so easily, what does it say about me?

‘It was tough at first. But my body is now a temple.’

He could have told me this by text. The only reason he wants to meet is to see my face when I find out he’s won and I’ve lost.

I try to smile but my heart – my bloody heart – isn’t in it. He slaps me on the arm – a victor’s gesture wrapped up as friendliness – and walks away.

The tide is all the way out and a heat haze rises under the remorseless sun. I ache from loss and missed chances. How can I stop feeling this way?

I go down to the narrow sandy strip and I run and run and run. This heatwave is killing people; on the news they’re telling the elderly and infirm to stay indoors. To me, it sounds like a challenge. How much further before I set the ICD off? I crave a flash of pain, or oblivion.

I collapse from exhaustion but somehow my heart keeps on beating.

When I get home, I throw all my prescription pills down the toilet. Let’s see how my traitor body likes that.

Two weeks after meeting Tim at the bench, and eight days after my twenty-first birthday, it happens. I die for the second time in my life.

I’ve just bought cider for me, Spike and Zoë. We’re on a comedown, and I need booze the way other people need Nurofen, to dull the pain of normal. The heat and the bright blue sky make my head throb.

Two Staffies are tearing round the Level in front of our bench. I light a fag.

The world darkens and the scorched grass horizon is now diagonal.

I take a breath, but there’s no oxygen in the air. My chest is tight. This is how it felt in training, after sprints.

Again, I try to suck in breath. Nothing. Not like training, then.

As I topple onto the grass, I picture a goldfish, plucked out of its bowl by a cat, lying on the carpet, gasping. Will the cat slice it open with a claw, or will the end come more slowly, from suffocation . . .?

Flash.