Two days later Troy was returning to London from an overnight stay at his Hertfordshire home. He had turned the Bentley off Shaftesbury Avenue, down Monmouth Street and was rounding Seven Dials into the lower reach of Monmouth Street, the short stretch before it blends seamlessly into Upper St Martin’s Lane. He felt dizzy, his vision blurred almost to blindness, and only the sheer familiarity of the manoeuvre enabled him to pull out of the circle and leave Seven Dials for Monmouth Street. Then he knew he could not see at all, and his fingers tingled and his breath failed and his hands left the wheel. He awoke with blood streaming from a cut on his forehead to find the car half buried in a shopfront. His windscreen scattered in his lap like diamonds. Leathery incunabula strewn across the bonnet like dead bats. He had demolished the premises of a second-hand bookseller.
In the Charing Cross hospital they X-rayed his skull, pronounced him sound, stuck an Elastoplast on his forehead and sent for his physician.
She did not say, ‘I told you so.’
She said, ‘There’s no time to lose. We have the X-rays of your chest. I’d like you to see a specialist tomorrow.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Troy asked.
‘You weigh eight stone, you black out and crash your car. That’s what’s wrong.’
‘I meant – what is the nature and name of my ailment?’
‘Just see the specialist will you, Troy. Do it for me. My surgery, ten o’clock tomorrow morning.’