He walked alone, down by the last tombstones. Would there be somebody here? Today of all days. Without warning his body was suddenly covered in perspiration, he felt dizzy, he couldn’t see properly, felt he would fall. He swayed for a minute on the empty path, somehow crossed to the edge of an old grave in the straggling grass, sat on its broken top and put his head in his hands. His heart was racing, pounding against his chest and banging in his ears as if his head was a drum: he felt he was losing consciousness. I’m going to die I’m going to die, was all he could think, I’m going to die. At last he understood properly what Michael was going through – how could he not have seen it? How could anybody think of anything else at all, thinking of death? It filled his mind like a heavy black stone. Still with his head in his hands, not sure if he could see or not, he prayed to a God he hadn’t thought about seriously for years: please God, he prayed, don’t let me die yet, don’t let me die yet, don’t let me die.

There was no answer.

After a while he opened his eyes, was almost surprised to see himself sitting on a piece of a broken grave, that it was a chill autumn morning, early sun just catching the trees on the other side of the cemetery. He got up clumsily, felt how his shirt was cold and clammy, brushed tomb-dust from his trousers. He looked around, but there was no sign of life around the desolate gravestones in the uncut grass. There must be someone, someone here, for me to hold, someone. But there wasn’t anybody at all except that far away, where the first sunshine shone, two girls in school uniform played with a fox terrier.

Very slowly, after a moment or two, the sweat still drying chill on his body, Harry Donaldson walked back to the cemetery gates and caught a bus to the hospital.

In the same waiting room on the second floor where he gave his name there were a few women but mostly the sober tense young men. They were quiet now, those voices raised to screaming in a club or a bar: a different reality. Harry had the absurd feeling of wanting to weep, for everyone.

His name was called. He was motioned to sit down across the desk. The same weary Indian doctor brushed his hand across his eyes, looked at Harry’s card, looked at the papers in front of him. He wore a name-tag: Dr Aziz.

‘Mr Harold Donaldson?’ he said, and Harry saw that on one grim, green wall there were hundreds of little holes, as if ants lived there.

‘Yes, that’s me.’

‘Well –’ Dr Aziz stared down for a moment ‘– I’m glad to tell you that your HIV test was negative.’