Those thoughts create enough distraction and lack of focus for Harry to strike hard. The lights go out and Ben feels the floor coming up to meet him. He comes awake, slurred and slow. Pain in every part of his body. Thoughts so confused that he can’t function. He rolls over and starts rising. Unable to see through one eye. His mouth so swollen he can’t speak. Where is he? He is fighting someone that hits him over and over until the pain is so intense it becomes a new dimension within his range of senses.

‘Stay down man!’ Harry pleads. Ben doesn’t stay down. He clambers to his feet, sucking ragged breath and fixing Harry with his right eye. Ben spits blood and puke and feels his teeth rattling loose but staggers towards Harry and flails into him.

‘Enough, Ben . . .’

Not enough. Never enough. He has to die. He is not meant to be here. He has to go back to . . . I have to go home to . . .

‘For the love of God . . . Stop it, Ben.’

Home. Steph. Safa. Steph didn’t love him. Steph sold him out. Steph told the world he beat and raped her. Safa came to his room. Safa carried him.

‘You fool.’ The voice comes plaintive and whispered but Ben turns towards it and swings an arm that gets gripped and held, so he headbutts instead and blacks out again. Flashes of images. A bearded man looking at him with real worry in his features. Ben hits him. Harry takes the hit and stares down with a rare show of emotion.

‘I take it back,’ Harry says in a tone full of regret and remorse for something Ben doesn’t understand. ‘You’re not weak.’

Ben blacks out again and this time he doesn’t get back up.

Harry stands over the unconscious, broken body of Ben Ryder. His own face bruised, bleeding, swollen and sore. His chest heaving. Sweat pours to mingle with the blood. He looks down at his bloodied knuckles then down again to the inert body lying in the pool of blood.

A metallic clunk, the door swings open as Safa pushes into the room to look round at the broken furniture then over to Harry standing over Ben.

‘Jesus, Harry,’ she cries out, rushing over. ‘Is he dead?’

She drops to a crouch and pushes her fingers through the blood smeared on his neck to feel for a pulse.

‘I said your way wouldn’t work,’ Harry says, wiping a bloodied hand across his battered face. ‘Is he alive?’

She nods. ‘Pulse is there, but weak.’

‘What happened?’ Roland demands, striding into the room and stopping to first stare open-mouthed at the sight of Ben and then do a quick double-take at Harry’s bloodied face. ‘Good God,’ he blurts and looks slowly round the room, taking in the devastation and blood trails. ‘He fought you? Ben fought you?’

‘Aye,’ Harry says, hardly believing it himself.