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“It’s negative,” PurpleEyes says, and the strand of hope running from my stomach to my mouth sinks. “So you can eat all the cakes you want,” she says, smiling, like it’s a good thing.

I try and pull it together. “Right,” I say. “Well I want to test for Addison’s disease next.”

“What?”

“It makes you dizzy, and it also runs in my family,” I say. I hate being pushy.

“Why do you want to test for it? You have chronic fatigue.”

“I don’t,” I say with a new confidence born out of sitting with my body day after day, trying to figure it out.

“You don’t?”

“People with chronic fatigue have achey limbs, generalised pain, acid reflux, cannot sleep, cannot concentrate and have what they refer to as ‘mind fog’,” I say. “I don’t have any of these. Furthermore,” I say, in full lawyer mode, leaning across the desk and looking her directly in the eye, “I am not tired. I used to be, I used to feel like I was dragging my body around with me. I don’t have that anymore. I am too dizzy to stand up, and I want to know why.”

Her mouth twitches, and I realise with a start that she looks sort of – proud. “Very well,” she says.

Blood test is still not back.

“Yeah I’m not sure where they are,” PurpleEyes said.

Which was reassuring.

This is kind of worse than my degree results, and I didn’t think anything more could be at stake, then.

I watch the syringe sink deep into my skin and begin to fill up with blood.

“You seem better,” Nurse says.

“I – thanks,” I say. “Whatever it is is going – very slowly.”

“No, I meant you’re less psychotic – about the needle.”

“Oh, right,” I say, taken aback. Psychotic?

“Cheers,” I say, but my eyes meet hers, and they are smiling.

She removes the syringe and walks across the room.

“Coeliacs disease,” she reads off the front of the envelope she places the blood into.

“Mmm,” I say.

“Do we want this one to be positive?”

I weigh it up. No more cake. Harder to eat out. Very hard to travel. But then – right now, the last time I ate out was December.

“Yes.”

“Fingers crossed then,” she says, and I watch the blood rolling around and around its tube, all the way to the lab and out of my hands.