We talk about Dale sometimes too. He kept calling me after that night. Asking if we can meet. Saying he needs to apologize. That he loved me, needed me. Once, I saw him standing below the flat, though I didn’t let on. Then it all just stopped. Never heard a peep from him again. Except I did see him. When I collected my stuff from the house. Not face to face, thank God. I’d arranged it with Mr Papadopoulos, who was pissed off at me because he had to box everything up and put it in the kitchen in order to let the room again. I went early. Got the taxi to wait on the other side of the road. Watched, waited for Dale to leave for work. Which he did, as clockwork. Although he looked different. He had some kind of beard arrangement going on. And he wasn’t alone. He was with a girl. Pretty, she was. Blonde. Didn’t look anything like me. They were chatting, hands animated, but it didn’t seem like they were together. It was more friendly. At least, it looked like it was from her side. And it dawned on me that she was probably the new occupant of my room.

It was weird being in the house. Familiar, yet I felt a complete disconnect to the place. It wasn’t long before the strangeness became discomfort and I couldn’t wait to get out.

When returning my key to Mr Papadopoulos, he made some comment – ‘There’s a new girl . . . nice girl . . . This one I trust’ – and so I told him. What happened. About the pictures of Anna. Added that he needed to sort out proper locks, as a landlord should. Then as I was leaving, I stopped outside my room, scribbled a note on the back of a receipt I had in my bag and slipped it under the door. It was the right thing to do, yet part of me still felt bad for doing it.

Anyway . . . there is some good news. Firstly, Edward’s doing great. And he told me I mustn’t worry about you or Mum anymore. Because he remembers everything. Going into cardiac arrest. ‘That big lump of a man’ doing CPR, trying to bring him back. All of it. But most importantly he remembers being dead. He died for just over four minutes in total. Can you believe that? To be dead then not be dead? I often go over the fact that if I wasn’t such a coward, if I’d stayed and seen the outcome, that all would have been different. But Dr Franco says you can’t live like that. A life full of ‘what if’s. ‘It’s about what is,’ he says.