“No,” Fowler said. He was listening closely, a little frown between his brows. “I see that, but is there an alternative? If you can’t learn to write with your right hand—and I take your word on that—what else is there?”

“A better prosthesis.” Joel didn’t usually talk about this, but then, people didn’t usually ask. “There’s a surgeon who’s developed an artificial hand with articulated fingers, operated by arm muscle movements. I’ve seen a film. Chaps using them to hold teacups, and drink from them. One of them takes a matchbox from his pocket, and a match out of the box. It’s not fast, of course, but it looks like a hand and it works independently. I want that.”

“Good God. That’s remarkable. How do you get one of those?”

“At vast cost. The inventor’s a German—oh, the irony—so I’d probably have to go out there to have it fitted, and the devices are ferociously expensive. I’m never getting one from the Government, I can tell you that.”

“So you’re saving up for it,” Fowler said. “Which is why you live in that rathole and do the graphology.”

Joel would have taken exception to the description of his home as a rathole if it had been less accurate. “I don’t know a better way to get the sort of money I need, except robbing a bank, which probably creates more problems than it solves.”

“Professionally speaking, I would advise against it. Do you think—” He stopped.

“Do I think it will help?” Joel asked. “Do I think it will feel like a hand rather than another ungainly artificial thing strapped to my arm? Do I think it will make me whole again, or persuade other people that I am?”

“Of course you’ve thought about it.”

Joel sighed. “I realise I might spend a fortune to get something that looks a bit more like a real hand and feels marginally less clunky, and discover I hate it just as much. I know that’s possible. But I still want to try.”

Fowler’s dark eyes were fixed on his. Joel said, “What?”

“I don’t know. I’ve done things because they feel like they might solve a problem, and then realised the problem is too big for any one thing to fix. You think it’s the solution until you get there and it turns out it’s just a plaster on a gaping wound.” He grimaced. “But sometimes you simply need to know you’ve tried, and now and again, things work. I hope you get your hand, and I hope it gives you everything you want from it.”

“Thank you,” Joel said, a slight wobble in his voice.

“And that’s why you’re working so hard with the current device? Getting your arm stronger?”