Thirteen of Jomier’s friends are dead. Three killed themselves. Two died of drink. Six had cancer. One had a weak heart. Another a rare wasting illness. The three suicides were all young women. Statistically, more young men than young women now take their own lives. But this is now. That was then – the 1960s. Two of Jomier’s suicidal girlfriends had fallen in love with ‘unsuitable’ men. One of the swains was  Welsh, the other a Pakistani. The third girl was married to an oaf. She had three children. She saw no way out. Jomier wishes he could return to those times and talk them out of it. But what would he say? That they were under a misapprehension that life was meant to be happy? That they set too great a store on human relationships? That if they could only hang on for a few more decades they would find other consolations – a Volkswagen Golf, a mobile phone, a computer, a thirty-two-inch flat-screen TV.

Of Jomier’s six friends who had cancer, four smoked – chain-smoked – one cigarette after another. The health apparatchiks are right: a large ingestion of alcohol and nicotine leads to an early death. But their admonitions are issued on a presumed preference for longevity. They do not consider that there might be some who, just as Achilles opted for a life that was short and glorious, might choose a life that is short and fun.

Only four of Jomier’s friends have died ‘through no fault of their own’. In one, his heart stopped. Two – moderate drinkers, non-smokers – died of cancer all the same. One succumbed to an obscure genetic disease. Schicksal. Fate. Jomier assumes that he too will die of cancer. Like father, like son. But cancer of what? Cancer where? Jomier waits to see where it will strike. He feels his body for lumps and pesters his doctor. He does not want to be told, as his father was told by his doctor, that if only he had come earlier . . . But what is a symptom? Subcutaneous nodules. A change in bowel habits. Festering moles. How is one to know whether blood in the faeces means haemorrhoids or a tumour in the bowels? Is back pain the symptom of a strained ligament or bone cancer? How is one to tell which ache or pain is par for the course, and which the beginning of the end? Jomier takes no risks. He has had barium scans and swallows, cameras up his rectum and down his throat. Jomier is not a hypochondriac. Nor is he afraid of death. But he believes his body merits the same attention as his Volkswagen Golf.