Page 32 of Who’s That Girl?

And started googling …

‘Hallucinations’ threw up 936,000 results, all of them terrifying. But that wasn’t all: there were loads of warnings about headaches and fatigue and irrational behaviour.

Such as turning from a sane thirtysomething professional into a crazy stalker.

Well, something like that, anyway. To tell the truth, I can’t remember exactly, as I was in a sort of clicking-mouse frenzy, going from one link to the next, reading one horrifying personal blog after another. Until, convinced I had all the symptoms of a serious illness, I raced round to my local GP’s, pleading to be seen without an appointment and explaining it was a life-threatening emergency.

That was forty-five minutes ago, I think agitatedly, checking my watch for the umpteenth time.

‘Seriously ill!’ Beatrice is exclaiming down my phone. ‘Oh my Lord, are you at the hospital?’

‘Not yet,’ I whisper, trying to hide my phone in the collar of my jacket, away from the eagle-eyed receptionist. ‘I’m at the doctor’s. But I’m sure he’ll want to send me there for tests.’ As I say the word ‘tests’ a bolt of panic rips through me and I have to fight to steady my nerves.

‘That’s what they did for my cousin Freddy,’ she says darkly.

‘They did?’ I feel myself grip the phone tighter.

‘Oh, yes, it was the oddest thing – one day he banged his head and the next he started smelling all these weird smells. It was really quite alarming. Everywhere he went he thought he could smell chocolate, which sounds rather lovely in theory, but poor Freddy was quite frantic as he hates chocolate. In fact he doesn’t have a sweet tooth at all. He’s much more a cheese-and-biscuits type of person.’

‘Miss Merryweather?’ I look up sharply to see the receptionist staring at me with a sour expression. ‘The doctor is ready for you.’

‘Oh, right, thank you.’

‘Unless you’d prefer to continue your conversation outside.’

Wedged underneath my ear, I can still hear Beatrice chuntering away: ‘So you can tell he’s obviously not from my side of the family, as you know me – I can never say no to a pudding.’

‘Beatrice, I have to go,’ I hiss, and turning my phone to silent, I smile gratefully at the receptionist and hurry towards the doctor’s consulting room.

‘Come in.’

As I push open the door, I see Dr Evans, my GP, sitting in his black swivel chair behind a leather-topped desk. A grave-faced man with a white wispy comb-over and tortoiseshell glasses, he’s jotting something down on his pad as I enter.

‘Please sit down.’ He gestures, looking up with an avuncular smile. Which sort of freezes when he sees it’s me. ‘Ah, Miss Merryweather,’ he says evenly. Putting down his pen, he steeples his fingers. ‘How nice to see you again.’

Sitting down, I smile shakily.

‘And so soon,’ he adds brightly, reaching for my notes, which are lying on his desk in a large blue folder. Opening it up, he begins flicking through.

Admittedly the folder is rather thick, bulging in fact, but like I always say, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

‘So how is the rash?’ he asks, referring to my visit last week.

‘Oh, fine,’ I say quickly. ‘You were right – it was just my eczema flaring up again.’

‘And the “sharp pain in the left ribs”?’ he continues, reading from my notes.

I feel a flash of embarrassment. That was the week before. I went to a yoga class and in the middle of this really big stretch I felt a sharp pain and thought I’d broken a rib. I swear it was really painful. In fact for a moment I thought I might have even punctured a lung and so begged Dr Evans to send me for an X-ray.

‘Um … actually, it’s much better,’ I reply, tugging at an invisible thread of cotton on my sleeve.

As it turned out, I’d just overexerted myself. A hot bath and some Tiger Balm and I was as good as new the next day. But of course I wasn’t to know that, was I?

‘So,’ he says slowly, ‘what seems to be the problem?’

I swallow hard, wondering how to put it, where to start, what to tell him first.

‘I think I have a life-threatening illness.’