He paused. Thinking. ‘Yeah, I’m from the East End. Plaistow. Terraced houses and council estates and old pubs. You could hear the Hammers playing at home from the back bedroom. Big cheer whenever they scored. Big groan when the goal went against them. I used to lie there and listen, Saturday afternoons. Used to make up my own commentary, as well.’

‘So why did you go to medical school?’

Good question, and one he tried not to think about too often. ‘Most of my friends ended up as car mechanics or estate agents. I could see all that ahead of me, and I couldn’t face it. I wanted to do something that meant something. And then…’

‘Go on,’ she said softly.

‘And then my dad died. Just upped and died. We found him in the bedroom one morning, slumped against the wall. He was wearing his shirt and his boxers and he had one sock off and one still in his hand. He looked… he looked like someone had said something to him that he couldn’t quite hear, and he was trying to work out what it was. One of the arteries in his chest had just given way. Aortic aneurysm, it’s called. I’ve done all the lectures, and I’ve seen photos in textbooks, and I’ve conducted autopsies of people who’ve died that way, but for me an aortic aneurysm will always be my dad, sitting there, one bare foot, and frowning.’

His face was wet. Tears were slipping from his eyes and spreading out across his cheeks leaving coldness behind. He hadn’t even realised he was crying. The grief was something separate from him that his body could get on with while he was talking.

‘I’m sorry,’ Marianne said.

‘And that’s why I became a doctor.’

‘So you could save people like your father?’

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘So I could stop the same thing happening to me.’