‘Not yet. Really just the headaches. And . . .’

‘Yes?’ He looks straight at her, waiting. And it doesn’t feel as though there’s anything significant enough to offer up to that clinical gaze. She’s exhausted, out of proportion to whatever she’s been doing. And impatient. She looks at Erica’s face and sometimes she thinks she sees Leonie’s, trying to tell her something. ‘Anything you can tell me will help, Ms Moon.’

‘Nothing major. It’s – tiny things. I’m tired. I ache.’ Vee has a sudden memory: Leonard Cohen. She hadn’t heard of him, when she was asked to photograph him in 1974. She bought a record, afterwards, and every one since. There was a lyric about aching in the places where you used to play. ‘I just remembered a song I haven’t listened to in twenty years. I keep finding my keys in strange places. I’m not hungry, and nothing tastes of anything.’

‘It must be very disorienting.’

Yes. It is. And she doesn’t want to die disoriented. She wants to die sure of the world she is leaving, of her place in it. She wants the last things that she sees to be real enough to photograph. She wants to keep whatever it is that she has that means she can compute the subject, the light, the film, the background and the story, and produce an image that feels true to the people who look at it, afterwards. And suddenly, she’s crying, ‘I don’t cry. I don’t usually cry.’

‘You aren’t usually in this position. Any disruption to your sight?’

‘What?’ She heard. Of course she did. She just didn’t want to. The tears gather, grow, spill.

‘Your sight. Anything unusual?’

No, no, no, no, no. ‘Only when a headache is coming on. I get pinpricks. And the light hurts.’

Mr Wilding nods, waits.

Vee feels a patch of damp on her front; tears have fallen on to her collarbone, slid under her shirt, and the silk is sticking to her skin. ‘That’s normal, though. For headaches. Migraines.’ If she states it, as a fact, she might make it true.

She is rewarded with a nod. ‘It is. But you should be aware of the possibility that your sight will be affected.’

‘Affected or lost?’

‘Well—’

‘Mr Wilding, please’ – she hates that her voice sounds pleading – ‘I really do not have time for this. Just tell me.’

She’s rewarded with a nod. ‘As time goes on, loss of vision becomes more likely. In some patients it can be an earlier symptom of tumour growth.’ He looks back to the scan, then at Vee, who is aware that she is sitting very straight, now, as though keeping her head balanced will improve things. ‘This cluster, here, is closer to the occipital lobe than we’d like.’