I cut across him. ‘Yes, no, I know all that. It’s not a moral judgement. It’s just, it leaves you with this sense, I’m not sure to what extent you ever stop feeling epileptic even when you’re medication-free. There’s just a sense that anything can happen, you don’t trust yourself to look after yourself in the same way. This morning in fact, Matthew, my boyfriend, he used the term pseudo-seizures …’

They were both looking at me.

‘He’s a doctor,’ I added. ‘He works here in fact.’

‘Oh, whereabouts?’ asked Dr Adebayo. I guessed he was around the same age as Matty.

‘Fracture Clinic. He’s the Senior Registrar.’

Dr Adebayo slapped his knee. ‘Oh, Matthew Goodison, yes, I know him, fantastic guy! He’s your boyfriend, really? We’ve done some A & E together …’ He shook his head with a smile, recalling, I guessed, a particularly hectic shift. ‘Matty! Hey, say hi from me!’

‘In view of the recent seizure,’ Dr Barnard said, ‘I think we’ll make it six months for the next check, is that okay?’ She didn’t say whether she knew Matty or not, but her reaction to our connection seemed a little cooler.

*

I hadn’t texted Matty as I had arrived in the building – I had felt annoyed with him after that morning’s discussion. He had not been remotely excited I was coming to the hospital. He had not said, ‘Great, pop up and say a quick hello, I can introduce you to the people I work with.’ He had not even said, ‘Oh what a shame, things will be so busy in clinic, I won’t have time to see you.’

But on my way out, in the wide airy atrium, I stopped and wondered whether to get a coffee from the Costa franchise and thought of the open smile that had lit Dr Adebayo’s face when I had mentioned Matty’s name. I hovered for a bit, wondered whether to go up to his department, then decided it wasn’t a good idea, but I pulled my phone from my pocket and texted, just to remind him I had been on the premises. Elvis is leaving the building. xx

A takeaway coffee was an unnecessary extravagance. I’d make myself something at home. It would be my reward for walking.

I was halfway down the driveway leading from the hospital when my phone buzzed in my pocket. Matty must have checked his phone between patient appointments.

You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog xxx

I smiled and slipped my phone back into my pocket.

*