The dull, lifeless eyes lifted up to him, and Cormac caught a strong waft of unwashed body.

“No anymore,” said the figure.

“Where did you serve?” said Cormac worriedly, looking at him carefully in case he knew him.

“Fucking . . . fucking Fallujah,” said the man, and Cormac smiled painfully.

“Aye,” said Cormac. “I was there too. 2014.”

“Fucking . . . fucking shithole,” said the man.

Checking which way was upwind, Cormac sat down carefully beside the man. “What happened?”

The man shrugged. He had to be Cormac’s age, but he looked far, far older.

“Aye, got stuck in a bit of trouble with the bevvy, aye?”

He looked at Cormac. “Were you really there, man? Or are you after something?”

Cormac didn’t even want to think about what something might mean.

“No, I was there,” he said grimly. “Did you know that regiment colonel, Spears?”

“Fuck yeah,” said the man, almost breaking into a grin. His mouth was covered in sores. “That bawbag.”

“I know.”

“Fuck it all,” said the man. “I lost three mates out there.”

Cormac nodded. He had probably worked on at least one of them. “What’s your name?”

“Robbie.”

“Cormac.”

Robbie offered him a bottle, but Cormac declined, instead offering him the last of the money in his wallet.

“I cannae take your cash,” said the man.

“Always going to help a comrade,” said Cormac. “Have you got a phone?”

The man laughed. “Naw.”

“Look, I stay in that building just there. Come find me if you need anything.”

Robbie waved him away. “Aye, fine, man.”

CORMAC COULDN’T SHAKE the memory, couldn’t shake thinking about what had gone on out there on the battlefield that had left Robbie on the pavement, left him treading water in his own life.

But Cormac himself wasn’t, he told himself hotly. He was doing something now. He was helping out and being useful, wasn’t he?

But he was, unusually, very disinclined to lend a friendly ear to Lissa, who was surrounded by people who wanted her to talk about what she’d been through, who would bend anything to help her get better.

LISSA HAD TURNED up at the appointment—a post-psych-ward discharge, which normally meant a suicide attempt—to be confronted at a beaten-down gate of a very small farmhouse by a grubby teenage boy and a large barking dog with slaver dripping down off its chops, which Lissa didn’t like the look of at all.

“Hello!” she said. “I’m from the hospital.”

“Shut your pus, you mingebag.”

Lissa blinked. “Is your mum or dad home? I’m really just here to change your dressings.”

“Feck off, bampot.”

Lissa didn’t understand any of this, but it didn’t sound particularly welcoming.

“Just let me in to have a look,” she said. She noticed he was wearing a large, dirty jumper with long sleeves that he had pulled down over his wrists.