Megan laughed as she saw me struggle to hold the balls in suspension. On the third try I kept them up longer than I had in the hospital.

‘Hey, that’s pretty good.’

‘I’m going to try out for the bypass Olympics.’

She stayed for three days-cooked me up some meals- bolognese sauce, a couple of hot curries, a stroganov-and froze them. I didn’t ask her about the break-up with her boyfriend, but she volunteered that she’d be moving into the Newtown flat as soon as she got back. Who with? I wanted to say but I didn’t. Maybe no one, and she’d tell me when she was ready. I thanked her too often, tried to give her some money, which she refused, and saw her off.

I settled into a regime of walks, exercises, more walks, more exercises. At first I was slow, doing not much more than a shuffle, but, as the physios had promised, improvement came rapidly. After two weeks I discarded the elastic stockings and was walking pretty freely. I stayed on flat surfaces for a while, then gradually tried myself on small inclines. In the beginning I had to stand still to allow the ubiquitous rollerbladers to avoid me, but eventually I was nimble enough to avoid them. If there was a better place for rehabilitation than San Diego, I didn’t know it. The temperature hovered around the seventies in the day and there was a sea breeze at night. It didn’t rain.

I had some blood tests and reported to Dr Epstein who expressed his satisfaction.

‘You’re making remarkable progress. Blood pressure good, rhythm excellent, rate the same. Your heart is functioning really well. Cholesterol’s coming back into line.