She steps on to the train and takes a seat, takes off her coat, and rubs at the crook of her elbow, where cotton wool is taped over the place where a needle went in. Vee is unused to touch. (Apart from Marja, who comes to her house to massage her pain away.) Even though she knows what she has endured this morning are objective medical processes, that the concentrated pressing of fingertips was exploration, quest, she still felt them as unwanted intimacy. And she knows, more or less, what the tests will show. Mr Wilding had said as much. He’d looked through her notes, listened to her description of headaches and moods, odd appetites and new blanks in her memory, the way she is grasping for words. And he’d said, ‘Well, we knew this was a possibility, Ms Moon. There are other things that it could be, but a recurrence is, I’m afraid, the most likely. Let’s do some tests and then we can see exactly where we are.’

Two hours of hospital, tests and questions but no conclusions yet, is horribly uncertain. Especially when she is so horribly certain, herself, and confirmation will be something like relief. It’s just a question of how many steps to the grave. A decade’s survival of glioblastoma is such a best-case scenario that she should almost be pleased.

In two days she’ll go back to Harley Street and talk practicalities and likelihoods.

Between now and then, she needs to wait.

At least this afternoon is filled up. Even if she shouldn’t have agreed to go to Erica’s. (‘Any lapses in judgement?’ one of the nurses today had asked. ‘How am I supposed to know?’ Vee had bitten back. ‘Everything makes sense to me.’)