This cannot be how I die.

It really, really can’t.

Naturally I know not everyone is blessed with the whole­ old-​­lady-​­from-​­Titanic option; drifting off into a toasty sleep, memories of making love to a peak Leonardo DiCaprio there to soften the blow of perishing. But choking to death at the age of­ twenty-​­seven? Delphie, no.

As I gasp for air, my brain seems unable to compute how I might save myself from this horror show and instead fixates entirely on the mortifying circumstances via which it’s playing out.

For a start I’m choking on a burger. Not even a premium or homemade burger but a cheap microwaveable one I grabbed from the corner shop after work. And then there are the clothes I’m wearing as I choke: pickle-green socks paired with the worst of all my ­nightwear—an ­over-washed, oversized atrocity with a cartoon of a grinning star above the slogan Honey, It’s Time to Sparkle and Shine! My TV is paused a quarter way through The Tinder Swindler, and my laptop is lit with one solitary tab: a Google page on which I have enquired, “Are microwaveable burgers real meat?”

Who’s going to find me in this state? My despicable downstairs neighbor Cooper, who will definitely sneer when he sees my nightie? The police? Rummaging through my private belongings, hunting for evidence of possible foul play? They’d have a tricky time finding anyone with a motive, considering I only know three people in all of London—Leanne and her mum, Jan, from the pharmacy where I work, and old Mr. Yoon from next door.