They let me travel with them in the ambulance. I stared at the activity with thickening dread. It was like a horror film. They spoke loudly at Granfer. Pulled his eyelids up, shone a torch in his eyes, smacked his hand, checked dials and tubes and machines.

‘Please don’t die. Please don’t die,’ I whispered over and over again.

‘You’ll need to wait out here,’ said one of the ambulance men as they wheeled Granfer through plastic double doors when we pulled up outside Accident and Emergency. ‘Is there someone you can call?’

I nodded mutely and watched them disappear through the doors.

The phone was in the main reception and I walked over to it in a daze, ignoring the sympathetic looks of those waiting. The room was large and plastic, lit harshly, filled with people with stricken faces, broken arms, bleeding cuts, old people with rainbow bruises on their papery skin, a woman trying to console a screeching, red-faced baby.

When I got to the phone, I raised a finger to call the chip shop but my mind went blank. What was the number? I rested my head against the receiver. I tried to remember but everything was blurred. The only number I had in my head was three, four, eight, three.

Three, four, eight, three.

I saw the phone sitting on the table in the hallway. I saw Edie’s handwriting. Remembered how I’d felt when I’d read that first note from her. The joy. The ecstatic pleasure that had coursed through me.

Penzance 3483.

As I dialled the operator my heart quivered like a terrified rabbit. A few moments later there was ringing. Max’s voice briefly. Then another voice.

‘Will you accept a reverse charge call from Tamsyn Tresize?’

‘Yes,’ said Max without hesitation. ‘I will.’

My insides collapsed with a sudden release and I moved the mouthpiece away from me so he wouldn’t hear me sobbing.

‘Tamsyn?’ He waited. ‘Tamsyn? Are you all right? What’s happened?’

‘It’s my grandad…’ I said after too long a pause. ‘He collapsed… I called an ambulance. I don’t know where… Mum is. I’m… alone… here. I’m sorry I called. I didn’t have… any other number.’

‘Which hospital are you at?’ The tone of his voice was firm and kind, and I imagined for a moment he was my father, there to take control. ‘Tell me where you are.’

‘I’m at Treliske,’ I said, managing to keep my tears in check. ‘In the A&E waiting room.’

‘I’m leaving now.’

‘Max?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can’t remember the number for where Mum works. Can you look it up in the Yellow Pages? Spence’s Fish Shop in Sennen. Can you ask a man called Gareth to find my mum and tell her?’

‘Of course.’

He put the phone down and a flat unbroken tone took the place of his reassuring voice. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered.