IT’S 4 A.M. AND I’M in a windowless, airless room next to intensive care in St Thomas’s Hospital; the ‘Friends and Relatives Room’. The pale hospital green is supposed to soothe, but has become an annoying visual muzak behind my gnawing anxiety. I’ve been here for six hours, the heating is giving me brain fug and the brown vinyl armchair, which squeaks each time I try to find a position of minimal comfort, has made my back ache. This is supposed to be a sterile environment but I feel as if I am in a Petri dish. I’ve already washed my hands three times and have spent the last half hour resisting the urge to do so again. The champagne and coke in my system have been metabolising and the whirring in my head is returning. The idea that my sister’s life is in danger is a vice around my chest. Deep breaths are impossible, just shallow inhales into the top of my diaphragm. I chant ‘God, let me die first’ five times, to ward off the growing panic.

The moment I saw Mum’s number on the Nokia’s screen I knew something was up. She never rings my mobile. If I don’t call her (and I rarely do), we don’t speak. My first thought was something must have happened to Dad.

‘Hi, Mum.’ Before she even speaks I yawn. It’s a reflex.

‘Clare has had an accident.’ Eccident. My mother’s a grammar-school girl from the East End, but when stressed her accent is Buckingham Palace. ‘She’s in St Thomas’s ICU. It’s bad, Gilbert.’

‘What? What’s happened?’

I tried to turn away from the noise in The Groucho’s reception. I was in the corner by the slatted blinds of the tinted window and facing a YBA line drawing of a crack pipe. I must have misheard. ‘Tell me again, I don’t understand!’

‘Clare is hurt. You need to help.’

At this admission of powerlessness, I felt sick with dread. The blurry lights from the street fused with the alcohol, the din.

‘We had a call from Jeremy. He said –’

‘Who’s Jeremy?’

‘Jeremy is Clare’s PA.’ Her anxiety has made her cross with me. ‘He phoned to tell us she’d been knocked off her bike, turning on to the Embankment. It’s her head.’

‘Where’s she now?’

‘In St Thomas’s, in intensive care. I thought I said that. It’s across from where she was knocked off.’

‘I know that, Mum. Are you OK?’

‘Gilbert, your father and I are so worried.’ She always uses my full name when she is under pressure. ‘Can you get to the hospital and let us know what’s happening?’

I felt conflicted. A part of my brain would not let go of the story. I hate myself for it.