Vee laughs, harsh and quick. ‘They might have thought it. They didn’t consider it. I still live in the same house I did when Leonie died. I was never hiding. I was just – private.’

‘No one tried to contact you?’

‘I wouldn’t say that. I unplugged the phone for weeks, and my neighbours complained about the noise of the knocking at the door. But I didn’t answer and they stopped trying, soon enough. Went away and speculated about suicide.’

Vee puts her hand to the side of her head, a sharp action that suggests a sudden pain.

‘Are you OK? Do you need anything?’

‘I’m – I’m fine,’ Vee says, but her smile is odd, dislocated. Her skin has gone a pantone paler in the last two minutes. Erica should get her home.

‘Let’s go,’ she says, and Vee rises without a word.

27 March 2018

27 March 2018

Late afternoon

Vee is walking along the Thames Path. When days are limited, a morning walk may as well take place in the evening. She can’t afford to be fussy about time of day anymore.

She hasn’t got far, though, when the dizziness hits, sudden as lightning. She gropes for balance, grabbing for a fence, and closes her eyes.

But that makes it worse. She feels sick, scared, as though the world is flipping her over and over, and she cannot tell if she is standing or falling, standing or falling. Is this how it will be, if she does go blind? And is it normal to be more afraid of blindness than death, or is it the tumour that makes her think so? Surely any life should be better than none?

She opens her eyes, slowly, and almost cries out with relief when she sees the river, the sky, her boots on the path and the sun on the water. And the couple hurrying towards her. She must look like a heart attack in action. The man, slightly ahead of the woman, takes her under the arm. ‘What’s happened?’ he asks.

‘I’m just dizzy,’ Vee says, ‘I’ll be fine in a minute. Thank you.’

‘Are you sure?’ the woman asks.

‘I just need a minute.’

‘I’m calling an ambulance.’ The man is speaking to the woman with him, not to Vee. He pulls out his phone.

Vee collects all of her breath. She is not sure of many things but she knows there are plenty of times when she has felt worse over the last few weeks. And if she isn’t OK, the last place she wants to be is in the company of a man with straining shirt buttons and hot beer breath.

‘No,’ she says, ‘I don’t need an ambulance. Thank you. I only live five minutes from here.’ If she stares at the same spot on the ground the world steadies a little.