‘Oh.’ She looks around with an air of guilt, checking no one’s listening. ‘Look, I thought about that while you were talking to your brother. My official advice has to be: go to A&E, get it checked out. But if I were you, if you asked me what I’d do in your shoes …’ She lowers her voice to a whisper. ‘Nothing. You’ll be fine. It’ll come out at some point, won’t it? If you go to A&E, you could be waiting for hours. You might miss … Well, I mean, it’s more important for you to be here, isn’t it?’

‘I might die of a perforated liver, and sue you. In that order.’ I blink away tears and grin to let her know I’m joking. I’m touched that she decided to give me good advice instead of the official advice.

On the other hand, I don’t want to stay here on the ward. If Drew can walk out, I can too.

‘I’m just going to go and look for Drew,’ I tell Fiona. ‘Check he’s okay.’

Without waiting for her response, I head for the exit. Once I’m out of Ward 10, I can’t help thinking what I always think: ‘I got out. I can’t go back.’

I can, of course. Can, have to, will. I know it’s physically and psychologically possible for me to sit in the corridor outside Marion’s room. Inside it, with Marion: impossible. But I can do immediately outside the doors, so I won’t let myself pretend I can’t.

I take the lift down to the ground floor and go outside and round the corner to check on my car. This morning I found what looked like an ideal parking spot, with a huge sign next to it that said ‘NO PARKING HERE’, outside the Jocelyn Hodges Maternity Centre, a department of the RGI, with its own name and building.

So far, so good: no clamps. There’s a woman with dark hair in a ponytail smoking outside the main entrance. Every time she moves, the sensors pick it up and the doors slide open. Then she moves again and they close. She’s talking on her phone in what sounds like a French accent.

I walk round the front of my car to check no one’s stuck an unpleasant note or a demand for money on the windscreen. Again, I’m in luck. I’m close enough to Ponytail Woman now to hear her side of the phone call.

‘They say I can have a local, but then I can’t eat or even drink water for six hours before the op, in case I need a general later, highly unlikely though that is.’