“I should have been doing exercises for years. You know how it is. But now I’m putting some money away, it makes sense to get the arm back in shape, so I’ll be ready.”

“Sensible,” Fowler said. “I suppose you’ve already had a lot of people assure you that there’s no shame in a war wound.”

“I have, yes. I’ve also had several people turn me down for jobs because why would they give themselves the mild inconvenience when there’s so many two-handed people available?”

“Supporting our wounded heroes is one of many things that people feel passionately must be done, by somebody else.”

“Ha,” Joel said. “I realise I’ve got to get used to where I am. I don’t want to be the bereaved person who insists there’s still hope, and becomes prey to quackery at every turn. It’s not going to grow back. But they are inventing all sorts of clever new devices—God knows there’s no lack of a market—so I intend to try for something better than I’ve got. That’s all.”

“Good for you,” Fowler said. “Damned good for you.”

He extended his pint glass. Joel tapped it with his own. They both drank, Joel contemplating his glass furiously because he’d given away perhaps a bit more than he’d wanted to.

He hated his self-consciousness about his injury, so he tried to act as if he didn’t feel it, including refusing to wear a wooden hand to fill out the empty sleeve-end. He would gladly thump anyone who sneered at the hook, even while it gave him the horrors. He hadn’t told anybody except his doctor about his plans to get hold of the German device, because I want a working wooden hand sounded like the stuff of fantasy.

And he’d just blurted it all out to Fowler. Prick.

They sat in the kind of silence you might expect when one party had just dumped a great lot of feelings on the table and the second party had no reason to care. Or at least that was how Joel felt, and he couldn’t seem to find a way back into the conversation. They’d been doing fine before—two pints’ worth of fine, chatting about this and that, sharing funny stories—and if his bloody hand had ruined it, he was going to kick himself for a week.

Then Fowler said, “So will you do it?”

“Do—?”

“The test.” He paused, then added, “I wish you would.”

“Because?” Joel said, and then, “Because you still don’t trust me. Not ‘still’. I mean, you don’t trust me. It’s always in the back of your mind that you think I’m a liar or a cheat or some kind of Svengali genius capable of setting up an elaborate deception scheme.”

“Not the last one. I’ve discarded that possibility.”