She stayed that day, alternately giggling and panicking, cycling rapidly from mood to mood. I thought of who I could phone. A doctor? Her manager? Her mother? But if she'd checked herself out of rehab what more could anyone do?
As the day wore on she began to seem calmer. We looked at some paintings together. It got close to sunset and she said "let's go for a walk." This seemed like a better idea than any of mine.
We walked seemingly at random through London, even stopping at the Courtauld to look again at her favourite Cézanne painting. She reached out almost to touch it and murmured "heaven" to herself again.
We walked on. I didn't realise where she was taking me until we were almost there. The club where her band had played that first gig. It was empty this evening but the staff seemed to know her, waved her through to the back stairs we'd climbed before.
On the roof, London glittered just the same.
Vic stood by the balustrade wall, just the same as before.
"London," I said, "It's yours now. You own the whole place."
"Yeah," she said. "I can't remember why I wanted it now. It all seemed so clear when I started. And now …" She passed a hand before her face, flickering her fingers, "it's like shadows in my brain. Things are clear one minute, dark the next."
I nodded.
"You need to get away," I said, "really away."
She smiled a weak half-smile.
"Yeah," she said, "that was what I was thinking too."
And she suddenly leaned back, too far back over the open city, toppling backward, kicking her legs up in the air.
My stomach lurched. I grabbed for her waist.
I caught her, wrestled her back over the ledge on to the flat roof.
She started to shake in my arms and I could not tell if she was laughing or crying.