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‘There’s a shadow on my lung.’
‘Uh-huh. So what?’
‘It might be cancer.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
‘And if it is, I’ll die.’
‘Perhaps. You might.’
‘You don’t seem too perturbed.’
‘You’ve got that right.’
‘I’m speaking here of death.’
‘A waking dream.’
‘I thought the dream was life?’
‘So it might seem.’
‘So which is which, my friend?’
‘Why spoil the plot?’
‘I’m speaking here of death.’
‘Uh-huh. So what?’
The call came around 4:00p.m. from my local doctor, Tim Shackley, while I was working at my archive in Warwickshire. ‘The X-ray has thrown up some questions. There’s a shadow.’ Just as I had predicted there would be to him the night before when I had requested an X-ray the next morning. He had gently scoffed at me then, warning me that I was in danger of becoming a hypochondriac. He sent me, all the same, that morning to a Stratford-upon-Avon medical centre. How I ‘knew’, I cannot comprehend. But I knew; somehow, I knew.
