Priya.

Sis — I came by the hospital on Wednesday. You were asleep. I sat on the chair for forty minutes and just watched you breathe, which is a thing I have not done since we were small and Mum used to make me share a room. I thought about how, when we were nine and seven, you broke your wrist falling out of the mango tree at Nani's house in Ahmedabad and you didn't cry until we were in the car. You waited till nobody could see. You have been doing that, more or less, ever since. You don't have to do it this time. We are right here. I will bring the bad jokes and the good biryani on Sunday. — Ro.

Priya — I am not very good at this kind of letter. Your mum is the writer in this family. I am the one with the spreadsheets. So: the spreadsheet of things I want you to know. One. I am very proud of you. Two. I have always been very proud of you. Three. You are the bravest of us three, and you have been since you were four, and I have known it since the day you decided, at nursery, to wear two different shoes because "they were both correct." (They were.) Four. Rest. — Pa.

Priya — I am, technically, your boss. I am writing this in the personal capacity of a woman who has worked alongside you for six years and considers it a small piece of luck. The department is fine. We are not falling apart. I am explicitly forbidding you from opening your laptop before the consultant says you may, and I am quietly hoping you don't for two weeks longer than that. Use the time. Read the books you keep meaning to read. Eat the soup. We will all still be here when you come back, and the world, surprisingly, will have continued. With warmest wishes, Imogen.

My dear Priya — I am your neighbour, two doors down. I am eighty-three. I have organised, with Mrs Henderson at number eleven and the new young couple at number seven, a small rota. Mondays and Thursdays, soup and bread on your doorstep by half past five. You don't have to come to the door. You don't have to thank us. You will, knowing you, do both. I will only say this — when my Edward was poorly in 1998, your house was the first one to bring round a casserole. I have not forgotten. This is, twenty-eight years late, the casserole back. Get well, dear.

Dr Shah — I was your PhD student, 2019 to 2023. I am writing from Lagos, where I have just been offered a lectureship of my own. I would not be writing it, I would not have finished the thesis, I would not have known I was allowed to even apply, if you had not, one Wednesday in November 2021, sat across a small table from me in the department café and said, very quietly, "Sam, I think you're underestimating yourself. Stop." I have a printout of that conversation in my notebook. I look at it before every difficult meeting. Heal up, Dr Shah. The next generation is listening. With deep gratitude — Sam.

Auntie Pri — I am ten. Mum said to write something nice and not silly. But also not BORING. So this is the in-between version. I made you a card. It has a sun on it because Mum said your wall is called sunlight. I drew the sun WITH SUNGLASSES because that is funnier. I have also drawn our dog Biscuit, who you said last summer was the best dog in the world. He has not stopped being the best dog. I love you Auntie Pri. Please get better and come round and we will watch The Princess Bride which is my new favourite. — Theo.

Priya — fourteen years since we shared an office at LSE. You were writing your first book. I was writing my third. We drank a lot of bad coffee from the machine on the third floor. I heard from Imogen. I am in Tokyo until June, but my mother's friend in Crouch End is going to drop off, on Thursday, a small jar of umeboshi and a tin of the green tea you said, eleven years ago at a conference in Lisbon, was "the only one worth drinking." I remembered. The mind is strange about what it keeps. Rest well, my friend. — Yuki.

Pri — your former patient. You won't remember me. I was twenty-three when I came to your clinic in 2016 and I was, frankly, falling apart. You saw me four times. On the fourth visit you said, with great seriousness, "Aisha, I think you're going to be fine. I would like you to start believing it." Nine years on, I am a primary-school teacher in Sheffield with two children, a fairly chaotic kitchen, and a husband who makes me laugh. I am fine. You were right. I read the news of your operation in the King's alumni newsletter and I have been wanting, for two weeks, to write you this. Heal well. You did a lot of small enormous things for a lot of us.

Dear Priya — we, the alto section of the Tuesday-night choir, are taking the unusual step of writing collectively. It has been observed, at three consecutive rehearsals, that without you the altos have been, quote, "an unsteady ship." (Sopranos said it. We'd never say it.) We are holding your seat. Margaret is bringing biscuits next week as a placeholder ritual. We are looking forward, with great patience, to the Tuesday when you walk back in, take your usual seat by the radiator, and quietly tell us, mid-warm-up, that we are all flat. Get well, Pri. The room is not the same without you.

Pri — nineteen years since the first day of sixth-form, when you turned around in chemistry and asked if I had a spare pen, and I lied and said yes, and then spent the whole lesson trying to write with the world's smallest pencil to maintain the illusion. We have been friends since. I have brought you: the orange marmalade you like, two terrible magazines, the audiobook of the new Ishiguro, and the framed photo of us at twenty-three in that horrendous flat in Brixton with the brown carpet. Put it on the windowsill. Look at us. We made it this far. We will make it past this too. — H.