‘Keep applying pressure to the wound.’ Looking around, there was nothing I could use for makeshift bandages. Shrugging off my jacket and my long-sleeved T-shirt, I balled up the top to press against Sephy’s wound. She’d been shot twice and was bleeding, front and back. I knew from past experience that the prognosis wasn’t good. At least one of the bullets had passed straight through her.

Callie turned to me, her stricken expression a study in pure fear mixed with grief. Her anguish was shredding my heart. My shirt against Sephy’s wound was already drenched in her blood and my hands were sticky with it.

Not good.

‘Where the hell is the ambulance?’ Sonny raced out into the street to meet the paramedics when they finally arrived.

Sephy gave the tiniest of sighs. Her hands fell away from her abdomen – and then she was still.

‘Mum, please. Hang on. Please.’ Fresh sobs wracked Callie as she spoke. Sephy’s eyes were closed, her hands at her sides were covered in her blood, but it was her expression that got to me. She looked … peaceful. For the first time, I truly understood the phrase ‘at peace’ when someone had died. Before, I’d considered it a euphemism. No one I’d seen die had ever been at peace.

‘Tobey, help me,’ Callie begged.

‘Let me try CPR.’

Reluctantly lowering her mum to the ground, Callie shuffled over to let me get closer. Kneeling over Sephy, I started chest compressions, two sets of five, before trying to breathe air back into her lungs. And, all the time, I knew it was useless, but I had to try. I kept it up for a couple of minutes even when my wrists began to ache.

‘Tobey, please, don’t let her die,’ Callie begged. ‘Please.’

But it wasn’t my call. I searched for a pulse and put my ear to Sephy’s mouth to see if I could feel or hear her breathing. Nothing.

Sitting back, I said quietly, ‘Callie, I’m so sorry. She’s gone.’

‘No, she isn’t. Don’t say that. She can’t be.’ Her tears flowing like a waterfall, Callie laid her head on her mum’s chest. I wrapped my arms round Callie, trying to gently pull her away. Sephy had been shot in the stomach and I already knew the damage the bullets of a .45 semi-automatic Dhoruba handgun could do. The two bullets Sephy had taken had surely shredded her insides.