Our fifth recording was cancelled, and I assumed that Dick had decided to end the series. But his sister told me that he had briefly returned to the Marsden, to be introduced to a new regimen of drugs that would stabilise a secondary tumour in his knee. By now, two months after discharging himself, he breathed with continuous effort, his diaphragm forced into his ribcage by the enlarging lobes of his liver. On the day of our interview his sister and I knocked on his bedroom door, unable to get a reply. We entered to find the French windows open to the cool November air. Dick was sitting in his woollen dressing gown at the bottom of the garden, staring at the house without noticing us. I had seen the same fixed eyes in my neighbours’ golden retriever when it had crept into the garden to die. Only when Dick rose from his deck chair and stepped slowly towards us did time begin again.

Without any greeting, he led me to his computer room, where a small editing suite had been installed. Before the arrival of the BBC crew Dick began to run through the film of our earlier conversations. Shifting the clips of film with his impatient fingers, he stared at himself as he addressed the camera. Until then I had been glad that the TV screen was helping to ease his last days. The medium that had trivialised his scientific career had appeared to come to his rescue, but now its magic had dimmed.

The BBC crew arrived, and we could hear their lowered voices in the hall. Usually their appearance provided Dick with a slight lift, and the expression would return to his face like a bucket drawn from a dark well. But he ignored them, staring at the empty screen of the editing machine. I touched his arm, thinking that he had lost consciousness, but his eyes were alert.

“Dick, they’re here…”

“You can tell them to wait.” He gestured dismissively at the screen. “The producer’s lost his nerve—he wants to change the ‘direction’ of the series. Can you believe that? A little late in the day. Bring in other topics, what do I now think of abortion? Abortion—do-it-yourself genocide … He didn’t like that.”

He laughed thinly, massaging his knee through his pyjamas.

“Dick, can you walk? I’ll bring the wheelchair.”

“No—it’s just down the hall. The surgeon at the Marsden talked about a prosthetic limb. The wonders of modern prosthetics, dear God—the castration complex raised to the level of an art form. He explained that they’re close to ‘understanding’ disease—they don’t realise that they’re soon going to be overwhelmed by an epidemic of imaginary diseases. The one thing we treasure most is a corrupt version of ourselves.” He held my wrist, aware that I was trembling. “Now, this experiment … Someone else will have to take over. Perhaps one day, who knows…”