‘I don’t support him,’ I tell her. ‘He’s asked the doctors to continue treatment – more transfusions, more oxygen. He wouldn’t let them catheterise Marion because a nurse I’ve never met said she might get a bladder infection, so instead they have to keep going in and changing her, and you can see in her eyes that she hates it.’

My voice sounds increasingly hoarse as I say what I’ve said a dozen times already. I don’t know why I’m bothering. No one listens. The staff here have things they’ve been trained to do – treat patients! Avoid infection! – and they’re determined to do them.

‘It’s crazy,’ I tell Bridget. ‘My grandmother is twenty-four, forty-eight hours away from death at most. Stop rolling her around like fucking scone dough! She wouldn’t want it. Put in a catheter, now. Stop listening to Drew when he talks about moving her back to her house with medical support, and maybe with daily transfusions she can regain some quality of life, and maybe she can listen to audiobooks. Who knows, maybe she can learn to play the clarinet and join a brass band!’ I blink back tears. ‘She can’t. Just go in there and look at her eyes. She desperately wants it to be over. Drew doesn’t care. All he cares about is him not losing his grandmother. If you had any decency you’d give her a morphine overdose. I know you can’t. But you should be able to, because this is ridiculous!’

Bridget pulls over a chair from the nurses’ area, sits down next to me and pats my hand. Who on the planet feels better after having their hand patted? Anyone who does is a pushover.

I could put an instant end to her sympathy for me by revealing that I’m knowingly making the most of my relative-of-dying-cancer-patient status to say all the outrageous things I’d want to say anyway. I’ll never get a free pass to be this obnoxious again, and I’m determined to make the most of it.

‘It’s a painful time for your family,’ says Bridget, as if this aspect of the situation might have escaped me. ‘But there are ways of making it less painful. And more meaningful.’

I eye her suspiciously. ‘You’re going to tell me sitting in the corridor with my back to the closed doors of Marion’s room isn’t one of those ways, aren’t you?’

‘You could sit quietly by her bed instead. Hold her hand, tell her you love her.’

‘I don’t think I’d get a look in. Drew’ll have her strapped to a treadmill by now, keeping her muscles toned in case she makes a miraculous recovery in time for this year’s London Marathon. If you listen at the door, you’ll hear him firing old University Challenge questions at her to keep her brain alert.’