‘I suppose I could try and …’ Fiona glances at the phone on the desk.

‘Please ring her. I know it sounds weird, but this matters to me. I can’t explain why.’

‘All right.’

‘Thank you! You’re a star. Really, I’m hugely grateful, whatever the result.’

Fiona walks round to the other side of the ward’s reception desk. I wait till she picks up the phone, then make a dash for it, clutching the book. Surprised I can move so fast, I crash through the blue-grey doors, turn left and run. I was planning to take the stairs, but the lift’s doors are open. It’s full of people, one of them horizontal and on a trolley. If this were an action movie, I’d climb under the white sheet covering Trolley Man and hide next to him.

As it turns out, I don’t need to do anything so drastic. I hold my breath, but Fiona doesn’t appear, and I hear no running footsteps before the lift doors slide shut.

Less than twenty seconds later, I’m outside and making my escape.

If there’s anybody reading this who doesn’t already dislike me, prepare to move over to the other side when I describe the rigmarole associated with me going to the police station to tell them what I knew, or thought I knew, or feared, about their quarry Billy Dead Mates.

It’s the same when I need to go anywhere: the rigmarole goes before me, to see how the land lies. I only follow if I’m given suitable assurances. Yes, even when there’s a murderer to catch and my life might be at risk.

You’re confused. Until now, I haven’t sounded like a prima donna. Let’s face it, anyone who lets a stranger stick his fingers into her after only a cursory introduction – that has to be a down-to-earth person, you’d think.

You’d be right. Deep down, I’m approachable, with no airs or graces. There’s a problem, though: if you let it be known that you’re reasonable, with a normal-sized ego, enemies and idiots will try to do terrible things to you, and they’ll succeed more often than they would if you were a monstrous neurotic protected by a six-foot-high blockade of restrictions and requirements.

That’s why I armed myself with a list of rules people have to obey if they want to come anywhere near me. Writing it – knowing I meant every word, however preposterous – was one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done. I kept thinking, ‘This can’t be me, laying out all these conditions’ – not the same me who once waived her fee to do a charity gig hundreds of miles from home, only to discover on arrival that there was a raffle involved and that one of the prizes was dinner with me at a dismal local restaurant in several weeks’ time – which meant travelling back to the Isle of Wight at my own expense to spend an awkward evening with a pensioner called Shirley.