Marcy wasn’t going to be up to it anytime soon, Claudia was aware of that, and right now she wasn’t sure she’d want to take part anyway. She wasn’t the person she’d been before the fire. Everything about her had changed: her appearance, of course, drastically, but her sense of caring about her life, her family, her recovery seemed to have gone too, as had her upbeat morale and the musical timbre of her voice. Most of the time she preferred not to talk. She simply listened as others spoke to her, rarely looking at them or even showing that she’d heard, although Claudia knew that she had. Damaged though her left ear was, it was still functioning as well as the right one.

Coping with the devastation of her mother’s spirit was almost as hard as trying to help her deal with the pain. It was so bad at times that Marcy screamed and writhed as she fought the urge to rip and tear at the fiercely prickling skin. She was on strong medication—in the early weeks she’d been on morphine—but recently the care team had moved her onto still powerful but slightly milder analgesics. The sepsis she’d suffered while still at the Morriston had, mercifully, not so far recurred. Those had been terrifyingly dark days for Claudia, when she’d felt convinced they were going to lose her. However, she’d managed to pull through, and now Rohan Laghari, the lead consultant at Kesterly, was optimistic that the powerful cocktail of antibiotics she was still being fed intravenously would continue to prevent it happening again.

Sepsis was one of the biggest killers of burns patients, Claudia had learned, so she understood how fortunate they were that her mother had survived it.

Today another crucial stage in recovery was due to take place, and Claudia’s heart turned over with dread and anxiety simply to think of it. Putting all the surgeries and pain aside, she suspected this was going to be one of the most difficult tests for her mother so far, although Marcy hadn’t said as much, but then she said so little. For the past couple of weeks the medical team had been preparing her for mirror work, which spoke for itself, and it seemed everyone had a role to play, nurses, a clinical psychologist, a psychotherapist, and also the surgeons. With so many being involved, neither Claudia, her mother, nor Jasmine could be in any doubt of how seriously this vital next step was.