Who’d have thought – you say something true enough times, you try hard enough, and maybe it sinks in.

Your brain can do amazing stuff to protect itself from pain,” Mo tells me. “But it’ll struggle to keep secrets from the rest of you for long.

I wake with a jolt that sends a shock of pain through my ankle. Crying out, I look around me. Floral wallpaper. Am I at home? Who’s that man in the chair by the door, reading... “Twilight?” Leon blinks at me, putting the book down in his lap. ‘You went from unconscious to judgemental very quickly there.

Holly couldn’t sleep; we played checkers. She lifts her fingers and dances them over the board like she’s weaving a magic spell before she touches a counter. Apparently it’s a mind game – makes the other player watch where you’re going instead of planning their next move. Where did a seven-year old learn mind games?

People struggle to see it’s not about whether she’s going to die – palliative care isn’t just a place you go to slowly slip away. More people live and leave than die on our wards. It is about being comfortable for the duration of something necessary and painful. Making bad times easier.

The sudden rememberings are striking at entirely random times now, just bobbing up out of nowhere and sending me absolutely reeling.

We’re so overdressed for a daytime event about crochet.

It was a weird way to get to know Leon, writing all these notes over the last few months, and it sort of happened without me noticing – one minute I was scribbling him a quick note about leftovers, the next I was in a full-on, day-to-day correspondence.

The next thing I notice is the sheer quantity of crap in my living room... It’s like a terrible episode of Changing Rooms. Flat has been redecorated to look immeasurably worse. Can only conclude that she was doing it on purpose – nobody could be this tasteless accidentally.

I think you should know,′ he says. ‘I like you. Like I shouldn’t. That sort of like.