‘Sucks here anyway,’ Georgia said, trying to smile but hating that so many kids left the unit when insurance money ran out, instead of when they’d got better. ‘What happened to that NHS programme you applied to?’

Alex sighed. ‘Dad drove me up for an assessment, but there’s eighty people on the waiting list and I’m low priority since I’ve never tried suicide and I don’t present a danger to the public …’

‘They’d let you in if you stabbed Henry,’ Georgia joked darkly as she pushed the button for a caramel latte.

Before Alex could react, the double doors by the snack machine flew open. One door crashed the wall loudly as a wailing, half-dressed figure burst through.

‘I am not to be touched!’ the runner shouted desperately.

The runner had evidently been dragged out of school, wearing the bottom half of his PE kit and a deckchair-striped school blazer over a bare chest. As he reached a dead end at the far side of the lounge, a burly Spanish nurse named Carlos and the two green-uniformed paramedics charged through the doors in pursuit.

‘Julius, calm down, mate,’ one of the paramedics begged in cockney. ‘They’re all right here.’

‘Remember our chat in the ambulance?’ the other one added. ‘There’s nothing to fear.’

Arrivals on the unit were often dramatic. Georgia had seen bodies flopped into their rooms under sedation, sobbers grasping parents, kids withdrawing from heroin wheeled to the addiction ward with puke buckets between their knees. Most common were teens who’d attempted suicide, fresh from the casualty department with neck braces or bloody bandages.

But overpowering the admissions staff and doing a runner was something new. Julius’s shocked white eyes contrasted with his sweat-beaded black head, as he glanced frantically for an escape route.

‘Move aside,’ Julius roared, as Carlos stepped closer. ‘I cannot be here.’

Julius decided his best chance was back the way he’d come, hurdling sofas and running along cushions.

Hot chocolate splashed Alex’s jeans as she backed up to the wall. Julius’s head almost touched the ceiling as he vaulted between sofas, but Carlos had a plan. The burly nurse didn’t fancy tackling a giant, so he grabbed the base of a sofa, tilting it enough for Julius to lose balance.

The enormous teenager became a falling tree, and a coffee table splintered under his weight.

While the paramedics moved cautiously between the furniture, Carlos was fearless, straddling the toppled sofa, then sticking a needle through Julius’s PE shorts.

Julius still had some fight, despite the sedative in his blood and a gory spear of the coffee table pushed through his cheek.

‘Big ones can take another,’ the cockney paramedic suggested as he threw Carlos another syringe.

Julius managed a rabbit kick as Carlos pulled down his shorts, but the second needle sent him straight to fairyland.