There’s a lull in the noise beyond the open door. For a second, no staff dash along corridors, no pool balls clack together, no fellow residents – for that is what they call us – shout the odds. There’s just the muffled sound of the ancient television in the dayroom. It’s a jingle, a commercial that’s been running every year my whole life. ‘Holidays are coming,’ a choir chants. It plays at least every hour.

I imagine myself going back to that room when I’m done here. Watching over and over again that light-studded Coca-Cola truck driving down a snowy mountain road. I think of a Christmas only experienced through festive telly watched through a not-quite-transparent sheet of protective plexiglass. I can dare to imagine that it won’t come to that. But it’s nothing less than I deserve – I know that.

Shaun drifts through the doorway, ending his conversation with another of the nursing staff in the corridor. He stands in the middle of the room and slips his hands into the pockets of his skinny-fit trousers. ‘They won’t be long, I’m sure,’ he says, his eyes sweeping over the empty circle of chairs.

‘I’m not under constant observation any more,’ I say, forcing a smile.

He knows this. I’m sure he’s delighted he no longer has to sit by an unlocked door while I try to force out a long overdue shit. ‘I’m not obs-ing you. Just saying hi, man.’

He isn’t just saying hi, though – he’s been sent. Against his will, I imagine. Shaun’s the closest thing I have to a friend around here, and it’s plain awkward when our interactions revert to that of nurse and patient. Looking barely older than me, as soon as I laid eyes on his greased-back hair and lamb-chop sideburns, I knew we’d get along. We shoot the occasional frame of pool, get a third of the way through a game of Scrabble sometimes, chat rhythm and blues. But it’s books that really unite us. It’s been a theme of my therapy that I have to immerse myself in the things I once loved, and of late I’ve been digesting a novel every two or three days. Shaun’s a big reader: he turned me on to Hemingway; I got him into Graham Greene. This morning, he was adamant we should hand each other’s books back. He has more faith than I do.

‘Shortest day of the year today,’ he says, gazing out of the window. ‘It’s not even three and it’s getting dark.’