She looks over at the car park and lets out a curse. Leo has parked her old Ford Ranger across two bays, one of which is reserved for people with disabilities. Who has time to think about trivialities like disabled people when a goddess is waiting inside?

The memories of Luna’s terrified eyes, her hand clutching Karen’s, makes her bristling irritation subside.

But the smell lingers.

She helped herself to large quantities of soap and hand sanitiser at the hospital. Took her jacket off, rolled up her sleeves, washed and rinsed with warm water, but the smell of shit and fear is still strong in her nostrils.

Might not just be in my nostrils either, she thinks and looks down at her boots. That bucket had sloshed quite a bit.

An embarrassed look over her shoulder while she digs out her car keys and then another at the wheelchair painted on the pavement. A thought flits past at the sight of it, but she doesn’t have the energy to hold onto it.

Two women in light blue scrubs and green plastic slippers are standing next to a large ashtray by the entrance to the hospital. One of them nods towards her and says something to the other, who takes a drag on her cigarette and shakes her head, then exhales and points to the disabled parking sign.

Karen wonders if she should shout something to them, an explanation, but she’s too tired. And there are plenty of free spaces this early anyway, she reasons.

A moment of light-headedness when she climbs into the car. She swallows hard and grabs hold of the steering wheel. The taste of the vending-machine coffee she knocked back while waiting for Leo to arrive, despite knowing better, suddenly fills her mouth. She glances over at the passenger seat, reaches out and opens the glove box, sticks her hand between the seats. Didn’t she leave a carton of juice in the car? The last of the three-pack she’d bought . . .

Yesterday morning, around this time, it must have been.

Leo probably drank it, she grumbles sullenly, then buckles up and starts the car. Right now, when she really needs it, it’s not here, that’s all she knows.

And neither is he.

As she turns out of the car park, she hears one of the smoking women shout something after her about ‘common decency’ and suppresses the impulse to give her the finger.

Just a quick debriefing meeting with the team. Then home and bed. But before she can even finish that thought, the memory of the painted pictogram in the car park resurfaces and the memory of a man in a real wheelchair follows hard on its heels. They’re getting the results of Gundar Freske’s DNA swab today. It’s not over yet.

And in that moment, she can’t hold it together any longer.