Outside the nurses’ block, with its single-glazed windows, was the ongoing sound of London, rumbling away. Normally Lissa didn’t mind it, quite liked it, in fact: the steady, reassuring noise of lorry deliveries; bottles being recycled from pubs; bin pickups; sirens; shouting. It was the city she’d been born in, the city she’d always known. It was her lullaby.

But tonight, it was getting right on her nerves, as she lay there, eyes dry and wide, wondering how many other Kais were out there, how many other boys wouldn’t make it home to their mothers.

Normally in her job she followed people into their homes. Alive people who got better, hopefully, or at least reached a stage of acceptance and learned to deal with whatever hand of cards they’d been dealt.

This had happened the wrong way around, and all she could see was a dripping pool of blood and wide staring eyes and someone who could have been her brother, could have been anyone she’d been at school with . . .

Every lorry stopping on the road sounded like danger; a car’s screeching brakes made her stiffen. She could feel the adrenaline shoot through her, without warning, feel it spurting through her system even as one bit of her was chanting, Must rest, must rest, and her phone glowed on the table, counting down the minutes until she had to get up; even as she could see the sky lightening through her cheap, thin standard-issue curtains. She groaned, turned over in bed, stuffed her head under the pillow, feeling simultaneously grimly alert and as if all her limbs were pinned down by stones, and the night ground on.

Chapter 10

Joan had arrived by the time the boys got back there to Islay’s house. All the lights were blazing in the quiet village street. Mrs. Murray, who ran the village shop, lived next door and had gotten up to see what all the fuss was about, just in case she missed any vitally important gossip.