As he leant against me in the hall, he said, ‘I asked you to take me back to my place.’

‘I know you did. But there’s no way I’m going to do that until I’ve cleaned you up a bit.’

Fear sparked in his eyes as he said, ‘While I was asleep in the car, you didn’t call an ambulance, did you?’

I reassured him that I hadn’t. ‘Dodge, do you think you can make it up the stairs to the bathroom?’

‘I can try.’

It was hard, and I was glad of the fitness that constantly moving cardboard boxes about had given me. The blood had stopped flowing so my carpets didn’t suffer much. Not that I would have minded if they had. I like the house to be clean but I’m not obsessive about it. That’s a gene I don’t have, though Jools does. Everywhere she lives is almost antiseptically tidy. Another point of difference between mother and daughter.

I got Dodge to the bathroom and ran hot water into the basin. I produced towels from the airing cupboard and laid one on the floor. ‘It’ll get filthy,’ he protested.

‘That’s what towels are for. Come on, let’s get everything off and see the damage.’

Removing his clothes, I was as gentle as I could be. Getting his trainers off was easy. Next the socks, which were thick with blood. Jeans no problem, belt, and zip. Underneath he wore old-fashioned white Y-fronts, also spattered with blood.

But getting his sweatshirt over his battered head was going to be trickier. I reached for a pair of hairdressing scissors which I sometimes use to tidy up my fringe. ‘Going to be easier to cut you out of this.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ said Dodge, characteristically putting the health of the planet above his own comfort. ‘There’s still years of wear in that sweatshirt.’

Obediently, I edged it up over his head. Then the T-shirt he wore underneath. Both had been washed so many times that it was impossible to guess at their original colour. Both were rusted with blood.

The scraping of fabric against Dodge’s head wounds started some of them bleeding again. I looked at him in shock.

There were few open wounds on the rest of his body, but it was a patchwork of swellings. Most were still red, but some had started to take on the darker discolouration of bruising. Thank God, a cursory examination seemed to confirm that no bones had been broken, though there might be fractures in his hands, which had been stamped on.

Dodge stood still on the towel while, as delicately as I knew how, I used a face cloth to sponge him down, starting at the lacerated head. The cloth filled quickly with blood and I had to keep rinsing it.

Dodge tensed when the wounds stung. He must have been in terrible pain, but still he did not cry out.

I slipped off the bloodied Y-fronts to reveal swollen testicles which had undergone a fierce kicking. I could not imagine how great that pain was.