He wrote me a message in the August and deleted it before sending, which he showed me, because it was still in his drafts.
And in the September he got as far as asking Laurie's permission, directly, in a car park, and Laurie said no, and Dev — who has known him since they were both twenty-six — did what you do, and respected it.
And then on the fourteenth of October a woman walked into his hospital holding a lunch bag.
He has apologised to me twice for not doing it sooner and I have told him twice that he was the only person in that building who tried, and neither of us believes the other.
What he actually said, the second time, is the thing I have kept: "I kept waiting for a version where nobody got hurt. There wasn't one. There never is, Jules — you just pick who."
And the last thing.
