The rest of it’s all a bit scrambled in my head, if I’m honest, like it was just a few seconds and like it took for ever. The bloke mumbling and strolling out of there like it was nothing and he was pissed off that we’d held him up. Me trying to key the radio and still keep my hands pressed against Johnno’s neck. Those stupid gloves, slippery with all the blood, and his shirt changing colour.

Shouting about an ambulance and whispering to Johnno.

Telling him to keep still, to hold on.

Feeling his boots kicking against the carpet underneath us and knowing I was wasting my time.

Knowing that both of us were gone.

There. Not to excuse the fact that I did some stupid things, that I still do them now and again, but just so you know . . .

As we’ve already established, Within Arms’ Length is at the shitty end of the obs stats ladder. A status that really means you’ve got no status at all. But for those privileged few, for the chosen, the Holy Grail of stats awaits them in the 1983 Mental Health Act’s very own VIP enclosure. I’m talking about the five-star, business-class status that is . . . Unescorted Leave.

Be still my beating heart.

Actually racing most of the time, thanks to the anti-psych meds.

To put it more simply: Fuck yeah!

Fifteen minutes might not sound like much, but trust me, you savour every sodding second of it, because you’re outside. On. Your. Own. Free to smell air that actually smells like air – as much as it ever does in north-west London – and to enjoy the relatively dogshit-free green space available within the hospital grounds. It’s something you have to earn, naturally, and you must demonstrate a clear understanding that, if you leave the hospital grounds, the police will be sent to bring you back pronto, and you can kiss goodbye to unescorted anything for a good while.

Yeah, of course I understand. Police, totally . . . got it.

Like I’d said to Banksy a couple of hours before, I’d been a very well-behaved patient of late. A damn sight better than the few weeks previously, that’s for sure. I’d earned a degree of trust, Dr Bakshi had said, and I should do my very best to maintain it.

‘I promise,’ I said. ‘It means a lot.’

George let me out of the airlock just before nine o’clock. He looked at his watch and told me I needed to be back by quarter past.

‘To the second,’ I said.

‘I’ll be waiting,’ he said.

I smoked a cigarette by the main entrance to the unit, just in case George or anyone else was of a mind to pop down and check, or was watching me from one of the windows.

I thought about the drugs they’d found in Kevin’s room.