‘It’s all right,’ he says. ‘Just take it easy.’

But I try to push myself upright in the bed. ‘Where’s Charlie?’ The words catch in my dry throat.

‘Right here.’

He beckons to someone down at the end of my bed. Tears come into my eyes when I see my son. He pushes up to me, drops his weight onto me, burrowing against my neck. I manage to lift my bony arms and wrap them around him, a bandage holding the drip needle tight. How on earth have I got so unwell?

‘Charlie,’ I whisper. ‘Charlie, I’m so sorry. But it’s all right now. All these people are going to look after us. Charlie, I promise you, I’m going to get well.’

A nurse comes to adjust the things around me that need fixing. I lie there and let her. I’m so unbelievably tired.

She leans over me as she straightens the blanket. ‘You suffered a terrible collapse,’ she says. ‘You’re very, very malnourished, and your potassium levels were something awful. But we’ve put you on a drip, and you’re already looking pinker. Before long, you should be right as rain.’

Alastair tells me I’ve only been here since last night – or rather, the very early hours of this morning. To me, though, it feels as if I’ve been out for weeks. He explains that he rang me, and Freya picked up and told him where I was. She was the one to call an ambulance. Alastair tells me he came as soon as he could.

‘I thought you’d lied to me,’ I tell him. ‘About being at university with Sarah.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘that I let you think I was there. I was so ashamed. I never made it to any university. I was struggling with anxiety, even back then.’

‘You shouldn’t be embarrassed,’ I say. ‘And I should have told you that I knew Sarah, once. We worked together, very briefly.’ I fill him in with what tiny details I have. ‘She really was as lovely as you said.’

Now the facts are all out in the open. Almost all of them. It feels better. It feels really good.

The sun slides round the window of the ward: morning, midday, afternoon. A different nurse brings round a tray of food, and helps me to sit up and eat. It feels as though I haven’t eaten in years. With each mouthful, I can feel my cells getting stronger.

A doctor comes to tell me I should be able to go home this evening, after just one more check of my bloods. I’ll be discharged for follow-up through my GP. Alastair takes Charlie to the canteen for a hot chocolate, leaving me to get a little more rest.