I did my research; I found out what I could buy over the counter that would do the job and calculated how many I’d need. I became an expert at buying the tablets. I walked the streets, finding new pharmacies; places where they didn’t know me; pharmacies with kind-faced staff who’d hand me more pills without suspicion. I’d explain that I’d hurt my back playing hockey. I’d hold my back, yawn and say I couldn’t sleep at night and then I’d nod attentively while they gave me the usual warnings. My patter became slick. I almost believed I’d hurt my back: if I concentrated hard enough I could almost feel the pain. If only injuries inside your head, your heart, were so obvious; so easy to treat.

And, as I’d walked back to Halls that day – the last batch of little boxes burning a hole in my backpack – I remember I’d noticed everything: the pattern of the paving slabs, the drain covers, the dirty weeds fighting for life at the base of filthy brick walls. It had seemed as if the whole of London was covered with the soot of city life; everything was tarnished. The sun, which might have made things better by gilding the edges of the city, had tried, and failed, to break through the clouds, and I’d seen even that as a sign. There was no going back.

I’d decided to do it on a Wednesday. Hump day, late November. Grey sky, naked trees stiff like skeletons, rain sliding down the window of my room in Halls. I’d lain in bed listening to the sounds outside my window: the cars, the hoots, the sirens – always the sirens. In the corridor, doors had banged as people went off for breakfast, and I’d caught snatches of conversation, voices I’d come to recognize although I still couldn’t match them to faces. The one with the American drawl; the Scottish one; the guy who shouted everything as if he were addressing a stadium.

Oh, shut the fuck up.

I’d stacked my books and folders neatly on the desk; tidied my room. I got up, made the bed, went for a shower, and dressed. I opened the window, then I sat at the desk and pressed the tablets out of their packets. I arranged them in lines of five, ready to take and, when they were all laid out like rows of soldiers, I picked up the first five tablets and was rattling them in my hand thinking that this was going to be relatively easy after all when the door burst open.

Grace paused only for a fraction of a second before leaping across the room like a martial arts ninja. She swept the tablets off my desk with her forearm, making them fly through the air and rain down all over the carpet.