Christ, they always do this, mobilize the whole family at the first distress call from any one of them, Silas thought. They were hurrying indoors, and Gracie was still calm, politely solicitous, after all, what could have gone wrong that an Oliphant couldn't handle?

In the living-room light she saw that Silas was covered in blood, saw the congealed trail across the carpet, saw Lydia with her feet propped up on pillows, the steady ooze of blood staining the settee. Her eyes swept the room, searching for something hidden, some explanation – no matter how sinister – other than, ‘Silas did this to Lydia.’

Gracie's shock immobilized all three of them, until she herself shouted at them to move.

Alec and Silas carried Lydia to the car, Alec's own grand old Mercedes-Benz that he would not sell, stretched her out on the back seat, a pillow propped up against the door to support her back, while Silas held her swaddled feet on his lap.

‘Not to the clinic where she works,’ Silas had ‘he presence of mind to say. Too many questions, too much delay.

‘Go to the Park Lane,’ Gracie said. She knew her way around the city, in spite of not being native to it, knew where the private clinics were, where the 24-hour casualty would provide instant attention, at a price.

‘How long ago did you call the ambulance?’ Gracie asked.

‘Twenty, twenty-five minutes ago,’ he answered.

‘Damn bastards – go left here –’ she said.

In between giving Alec precise directions, she cursed the city and its forbidding unfriendliness, cursed the ambulances that never arrived, the police who weren't around when needed, the country that was going to hell, a government that didn't care, not sparing a thought for Silas's anguish, for the fact that he had helped to bring that government to power and now worked for it. She heard Lydia's weeping give way to a low, animal moan, saw her sister's eyes shut against a pain she could almost feel herself, unaware that this physical pain was Lydia's way of displacing a much deeper, unfathomable agony.

Alec got them to the entrance of the clinic's trauma ward within seven minutes.

‘Seven fucking minutes flat,’ he would say afterwards.

Lydia was to remain in hospital for three weeks. For the first few days, her plastered feet were raised in traction to prevent blood clots from forming, and having her limbs suspended in the air like that made her look gravely ill. The doctor said she was fortunate, she had not severed any arteries, but she had cut into one of the tendons, and this would require some attention. Mercifully, her blood loss was not that bad, given the severity of the cuts. Good that she had been brought in so quickly.

‘But, God, she did need some stitching, over a hundred, you want to count them?’ the doctor asked jocularly, addressing himself to Mikey, whom he thought capable of responding with quick empathy. In the circle of gloomy adults, the young man seemed most likely to bring some levity, make the poor suffering woman smile a bit.