Once she woke and raised her head. ‘Who are you?’ she asked me in a clear voice. I stared at her. The question seemed monstrous.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

She lowered her head again and went back to sleep. Perhaps she hadn’t even been properly awake. I went to my room, went to bed, and cried half the night.

Henriette died ninety-­three days after my arrival and twenty-­six days before me. She was my friend for sixty-­seven days. She was the best friend I had in my life.

On one of her last nights, I was sitting beside her as she slept. The previous evening, the doctors had decided to increase her dose. We must all endure a certain amount in our lives, the consultant had said, but it doesn’t have to be more than necessary. Her breathing was scarcely audible, but it was calm, and I was looking out of the window to where the bare trees reached up into the night sky. Her handbag was open on the window ledge, and her belongings were laid out beside it at regular intervals, as if someone had tried to put them in order. A lipstick, a gold powder compact, writing paper, a coin purse, a nail file and a thin, rather worn leather writing case. Henriette’s breath rattled quietly, and I felt a sudden rush of anger. I was angry with the little wizened, shrunken woman at whose bedside I had spent so many hours, and who was now withdrawing from me and leaving me nothing but a rattling breath.

The anger ebbed as quickly as it came. Her breath was calm again now, and even. The only possible way not to become ridiculous in old age is to acknowledge one’s own ridiculousness, she once said. I got up and went to the window. I spotted the initials on her leather writing case: H.L. I opened the case. It contained a few documents, medical records, certificates and loose papers. Right at the bottom was her passport. The pages were covered with brightly coloured stamps. Henriette seemed to have spent her whole life travelling. The photo showed her as a young woman. She’d not been beautiful then, either, but her hair was black and shoulder-­length and she was looking into the camera with her chin held high. Her décolletage with the scar was concealed by a big black shawl. At the bottom of the page were her personal details: full name, place of birth, nationality, distinguishing marks, the usual. My gaze snagged on her date of birth. I faltered, and tears sprang to my eyes. I felt faint, and clung to the window sill in order to stay upright. Henriette was four years younger than me.

I looked across at her. She lay in the bed, her body bathed in moonlight as if covered with snow. I couldn’t see the movement of her breath; everything about her appeared frozen except her eyes, which darted about under the lids and seemed blindly to follow my every move as I put her things back in the bag and opened the window wide to let in the night air.