I focus beyond the grid of steel wire embedded in the glass, taking in the view of the service road that separates this wing from its neighbour. One tree stands alone, towering from a gap in the concrete. It’s a skeleton now, tangled limbs black against the dusty setting sun. For over half a year, it’s been my only indicator of the passing seasons. While I’ve been preserved in the unchanging temperature and eternal fluorescent light of this building, those once lush green leaves, turning crimson as the nights drew in, falling to the ground as the frosts arrived, have reminded me that time has gone on as normal for everyone outside.

‘Don’t look so worried, man,’ he says. ‘It’ll go fine.’

I give him a thumbs up, although I don’t feel thumbs-uppy in the least. The tang of metal in my mouth is making me grimace. It’s a constant side effect of the sleeping medication, but it’s particularly pronounced when my mouth is as parched as it is now.

‘Want me to hang about for the meeting? Bit of moral support?’ Shaun asks.

‘They don’t need you anywhere else?’

‘They always need me somewhere else. Rather be here. Make sure you don’t fuck it up.’

We both laugh. They often work Shaun sixteen hours a day, regularly cancel his days off and he hasn’t had a pay rise in the three years he’s been in the job. But the most complaint you’ll ever get from him is a roll of the eyes and a muttered, ‘Cutbacks.’ Still, he makes time for me every day as if nothing else is more important, and he does the same for just about everyone here.

‘Cheers, mate,’ I say, looking at the floor as he takes a seat.

‘Don’t be a soft twat.’

There’s a tap at the door. ‘He’s just here,’ a nurse’s voice says outside.

Looking even taller, even more tanned than he does in his natural habitat of Five Oaks Secondary, Silver Foxton steps inside. He stops three paces into the room, clutching the lapels of his mohair overcoat. His customary squinting smile is unconvincing in here – he’s afflicted by the same wariness that comes over all visitors. It’s in his eyes – the fear that someone might take his hand, drag him into conversation, test his unshakeable demeanour.

‘Oliver. How are you, chap?’ His voice is incongruous, a sound that belongs in a separate part of my life. It’s the same as seeing a teacher out in their casual clothes at the weekend.

‘All right, thank you, sir.’

‘Ian. Please.’ He pinches his trousers at the knee and shunts them upward to sit. ‘I felt I should show my face.’