I found the young woman in the street leaning against the wall of my house where it caught a patch of morning sun. She was drooping. She had an unfolded blanket and was standing on it. There was a patch of vomit on the pavement. Someone at the corner was on a mobile, calling an ambulance, I supposed.

It wasn’t until a few minutes later that my conscience got the better of me. I had been on my way to work, and walked back, to find that the person on the phone had gone and the woman was still leaning. My worry was that she had taken something that would endanger her life.

If I had been brisk and motherly, I would have helped clean her face and let her lean on me. At it was, she asked the way to Channel 4, near which there was a doctor, she said. Her speech was quiet and slurred. I told her my name and she told me hers, twice, but I couldn’t hear what she said.