‘I came back to visit my favourite medical expert,’ I tell Fiona with a smile. Getting out of here with the little book in my bag will be easier if I’m casual about it. ‘I think your assessment was correct. You know – the ringpull situation? Nothing bad’s happened to me yet. If I was internally perforated, I’m sure I’d know by now.’

Fiona manages an anxious half-smile. ‘Honestly, Kim, are you okay? Are you sure you wouldn’t like—’

‘A leaflet about the hospital’s counselling service? Positive, thanks. And they’d like it even less.’

‘Who?’ Fiona looks confused.

‘Your counselling people.’ I mean, Christ, who’d want to meet me?

‘I don’t get what you mean.’

‘Nothing. Another bad joke. I’ve got an idea: why don’t I stop making them?’ A strange, high-pitched laugh leaks out of me. You’d never guess I was a professional performer; my acting couldn’t be worse if I tried. ‘I was passing, so I popped in to … I don’t know, to check this place was real, I suppose.’ I sound as pathetic to myself as I must to Fiona. ‘Nothing about the hospital or the ward felt real when I was here before.’

‘Lots of people say that.’

I should wait till she moves away, but she’s showing no sign of going anywhere. I’m too impatient to think up a decent lie. My arm’s twitching with the need to grab the white book.

Do it fast. Over and out.

Trying to appear open and confident rather than furtive, I reach up, pull the drawing pin out of the noticeboard and take down the booklet.

‘What are you doing?’ Fiona says.

‘Have you seen this?’ I ask her, but I don’t hand it over. Flicking through it, I find its insides empty. There’s just ‘Death’ on the front cover and the other four words on the back cover.

Death devours all lovely things.

Thanks to Google, I know it’s the first line of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, an American poet.

Death devours all lovely things;

Lesbia with her sparrow

Shares the darkness,—presently

Every bed is narrow.

It’s the same poem that contains the words in the little white book I was given at a gig in 2014.

The narrow bed is the waiting grave, evidently: the symbol of our ultimate, inevitable isolation. What a cheery thought. No wonder so many of us try to stuff our earthly beds full of as many people as possible while we still can.

This book I’m holding and the one I was given are a pair.

I pass it to Fiona. She looks at it. ‘People are funny,’ she says with a shrug. ‘Funny peculiar, I mean, not funny ha-ha. Apart from you. You’re funny ha-ha, being a comedian.’ She adds this quickly, as if afraid I might be offended otherwise.

‘Do you know who it’s from? Or to?’

‘Oh, it’s for us – the nurses and doctors here.’

‘How do you know?’