Every week through Lent, a writer reflects on a journey through a personal wilderness to an unexpected grace – here, a mysterious brush with death in a Roman apartment

A quarter of a century ago, after an unexplained fall, I woke up in a hospital in Rome acutely head-injured and disorientated. A blurred but familiar face came into focus as the English girl who shared my flat near the railway ­station. “But what have I done?” I protested. Then I was out again.

Today I have only “islands of memory” of what happened – no consistency. I remember that I sat for a while on the marble steps outside our flat, my vision blurred and a taste of copper in my mouth. I was aware of a burning pain in my head and a trickle of blood down my face. Had Gilly not come home early that evening, I might not have survived.

At about six o’clock she opened the door to the flat at 195 Via Salaria. Handprints of blood covered the wall where I had tried to steady myself. A pungent copper smell filled the air. Down the hall in the bathroom, Gilly found two damp bath towels stained red. I was in the kitchen, face down on the floor. Blood had congealed in a small pool round my head. In a panic, Gilly tried to sit me up, but my movements were uncoordinated and my speech garbled. I seemed to be “speaking backwards”, Gilly later told the police, “like someone speaking in tongues”.