‘We were given a date we had to turn up and be prepared to stay for twenty-four hours. There were also check-ups scheduled once a week for the three weeks afterwards. So we turn up and we’re prepped for the trial itself. It was in a ward at the AMC but they’d put beanbags and stuff in there, tried to make it not look like a hospital. There was a TV, a couple of PlayStations, even some board games. Everyone was nervous, but a few people started talking and it got a bit better. Then the nurses came, and we were each given an injection in turn, and we settled in for the long haul. An hour or so later the first guy who’d got the injection, he was this blond guy whose neck was as thick as his head, started complaining of feeling weird. We’d been playing each other on the PlayStation, some racing game, and he’d kept on winning. Then he started crashing, driving into things, going the wrong way round the track. I thought he was just being a dick but when I looked at him I could tell something was wrong. You could see it in his face, this kind of tension like he was in pain or something. About ten minutes after that he got up and went over to one of the nurses who were doing tests on us. He looked drunk, the way he was walking, and everyone noticed. He reached the nurse and said he had a headache and she’d got him to sit down and drink some water. We all just tried to ignore it, pretend nothing was happening, but you could tell the whole room was a little shaken. But when someone else also complained of a headache and then collapsed I knew there was something seriously wrong. The nurses were doing their best but they looked as scared as we all felt. The first guy was now lying on his back moaning, hands over his face. Each of us was thinking Am I next? It was terrible. But that was nothing compared to what was coming.’

The room’s silent. Each of us imagining what it must’ve been like. Then again, is it so different from how many of us live our lives, waiting for the hammer to fall?

‘So what happened next?’

Polman’s been staring at the table the whole time he’s been talking, but now he finally raises his eyes and looks straight at me.