‘What if you can’t go on rambles afterwards?’ Rhun quizzed with less hostility and more concern.

‘Maybe, if you came with me,’ I said, gesturing towards the appointment card, ‘Beryl or Dr Williams would be able to answer your questions.’ He blew me a kiss across the table, responding more soberly, ‘I don’t want you to do this, but I have to respect your right to follow it through. I’ll arrange to take the day off.’

The IVP was fine: a shot of dye in the arm and a series of X-rays that showed the venous structure of the kidneys. Beryl had her chat with Rhun, and in the next days he opened up much more. He downloaded articles that we discussed at length, especially the testimonies of those who’d donated kidneys. He seemed satisfied that the recovery rate for the donor was very good and that the one remaining kidney had the capacity to grow and compensate for the other.

‘Beryl said that unless I was a hundred percent behind you she’d pull the plug on the whole thing,’ Rhun ventured one afternoon as we dug up potatoes. I asked him what had made him change his mind.

‘A person willing to give a kidney to a friend is a pretty special kind of person and it’s made me love you even more. Though I still think you’re off your head!’

The renal artereogram was the last hurdle. A fine catheter was inserted under local anaesthetic into an artery in my groin, and then coaxed up towards the kidneys. Once in position, a dye was released to show the arterial structure of the kidneys. Some people have two arterial branches serving one or even both kidneys and that makes them unsuitable for removal; mine had one artery each. Lying flat on my back as still as possible for four hours afterwards was a bore. Rhun read the newspaper, flirted with the nurse who checked my blood pressure every twenty minutes and then went off to have lunch with Beryl.

The thumbs up came through in August and the surgery was set for the first Thursday in September. Work had given me a three-month paid special leave and as the news got around people stopped me in the corridors and in the canteen to say how brave… selfless… virtuous… and just plain fucking stupidly wonderful I was.

‘You’d do the same for someone you loved,’ I’d fire back at them. ‘You would, wouldn’t you?’ And sometimes you could see it in their faces that they bloody well wouldn’t.

The surgeon came around a couple of hours after I’d been admitted. He was younger than I’d expected. He talked with Rhun and me for a while, referring back to the notes he’d been sent from the Royal Liverpool. Then he did a physical examination and took my blood pressure.