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Like I’m going to keep any horse, ever again? Please go away, Fetlock. I don’t wish to be cruel, but don’t you realise that my dream has ended, that you’re shooting holes in my soul?

I smiled up at her, and made some anodyne reply. On a cruise ship, be tolerant. Keep your own counsel.

Wee Jimmy had been shot in the spine, for all sorts of alleged reasons. You never asked too many questions. Some said it was revenge for a murder by his uncle Tam-the-Hatchet. In that sense the unit was akin to a church, a place of sanctuary where you accepted people for their needs rather than their deeds. Jimmy was gangly, mild-mannered and wary. He had the air of someone faintly bewildered as to why the staff were being so nice to him and he tried hard in rehab. He gave everyone on the ward a slice of his birthday cake and when he left hospital he made the front page of the tabloid press. As well as their victims, every now and again you got criminals in the unit with broken spines. Big Willie, one of the physiotherapists, a benign sixteen-stone barn door of ex-rugby player, remarked that over the years he’d had several as patients but only realised it when he read about the court cases in the paper afterwards. One man was later convicted of organising a murder.