Sebastian listened, appalled. He didn’t want to hear a story about a man dying. He wanted to hate the surgeon for dumping it on him, but at the same time he was conscious of a struggle taking place within the man across the desk, some compulsive inner battle the surgeon seemed to be losing. He’s breaking up, Sebastian thought. The guy is having an episode.

By the end of the consultation, Dr Seymour could not even look him in the eye. He averted his face as he shook hands, so that Sebastian was reminded of old exorcism films, in which the person who is possessed recoils from a priest.

The first time Sebastian had cancer, he had taken a course of pills. They were meant to clear it up and had appeared to do the trick; it was almost like taking antibiotics for a nasty flu.

He had been diagnosed soon after his twenty-seventh birthday after suffering from headaches and severe vertigo. It was a primary brain tumour, malignant, in the cerebellum, which was the lower back part of his brain. He had cancelled a work trip that time as well, had let everybody think he was away at the conflict zone when in reality he was sitting on his couch, smoking joints to relieve the nausea from the pills and enduring an acne rash that spread over his face and chest. The experience as a whole was like regressing to teenagedom – being grounded, getting stoned all day long.

After that, he’d had a scan showing that everything was fine. He had come to regard that day as his personal day zero, the first day in what would be his new calendar. That was two years ago, or four Gregorian years. He thought he had seen the back of the disease, and every so often, when he caught himself getting bored on a bus or at a checkpoint, as he waited for some official to okay his credentials, he would draw himself up and think, That’s right. I won. I fucking won. He had once said this to Teena, to be met with the dry response: ‘Well, you know, Sebastian, no one wins forever.’ Which wasn’t an attempt to rain on his parade – it was just her way to tell the truth.