I nodded. I’d never ridden in an ambulance before. They don’t offer it up when they’re dead.

I followed behind as they carried him through the flat, not mentioning the artefacts as people usually would. Oblivious to Cyril the Squirrel. They remained serious and focused as we all headed into the light of the communal stairway. It seemed more brutal than usual. Service-station break on an all-night drive kind of brutal. One minute they were talking to him as they negotiated the stairs, along with the still-attached machine and oxygen, chatting in faux-jolly tones, saying things like, ‘You’re doing great, Edward. We’ll be at the hospital in no time,’ and the next they’d sped up, rushing down the stairs with him, stopping abruptly at the bottom.

I could see Edward’s eyes had now closed. ‘Don’t sleep . . . Please don’t go to sleep, Edward,’ I said as Bear-Like’s enormous frame blocked my view, projecting words I didn’t understand.

Jamie lowered the back of the chair and Edward’s upper body was flat, his legs in the air. It would have been funny had it not been so terrifying.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked. An irritant. A useless irritant.

‘Can you keep back, please,’ Bear-Like said to me.

They too stepped away from him. Their energy different. Intense.

‘What’s wrong? What’s happening?’

A woman’s robotic voice filled the foyer. ‘Evaluating heart rhythm.’ A loud high-pitched beep pierced my head. ‘Delivering shock.’

‘Why are you doing that?’

He didn’t acknowledge me and was now next to Edward. Pressing down on his chest. Counting. I’d seen enough Casualty in my life to know what was happening. The word ‘cardiac’ echoed through the stairwell.

Jamie was shouting, ‘Edward . . . come on. No, Edward, don’t leave me . . . please.’ Or perhaps it was me. I can’t be sure of anything. It was probably me. Because I was screaming. I think I was screaming. It was as if I had died. I was outside of my body watching them, slow motion, pressing and pressing and pressing and pressing.

‘No pulse for seventy-five seconds.’

Pressing and pressing and pressing.

And I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t see him dead. So it was then that I knew for sure that I was that despicable person. It was then that I ran away.

Then there was …

Then there was one.

I’d called and called you, but you weren’t picking up.

I wasn’t angry. Presumed you were sitting at some overpriced reclaimed kitchen table, flush in one hand and beer in the other, oblivious. But when I go over it, as I do daily, how I wish you’d answered.

I gave it about fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes, cold in every sense, before I returned to the scene. The ambulance had left. And Edward with it.