I’m steered back into a cubicle where curtains are drawn around me and I fall into a deep and woozy sleep, like a blackout without the nightmares.

When I wake, Doc O’D is standing over me, gently prodding me. ‘All over now, Sam. You’re coming home with me.’ He winks, like the two of us are in this thing together. My tongue has swollen to twice its size. I don’t even bother asking him if my parents have called. A nurse has brought a glass of water and my clothes. Doc O’D holds the glass to my lips. ‘Little sips.’

He bundles up my clothes and tells me I can stay in the gown, then wraps a blanket around my shoulders and holds me under my arm, supporting me. I feel so loose and floppy I lean right into him, so he’s forced to kind of carry me. I want to curl up in his arms. The car is right outside the entrance with its flashers on; one of the perks of being a hot-shot consultant. He helps me into the back, the gown flapping open so bits of my tummy and thigh are exposed. I lie down flat as he pulls the gown tight around me, and I drift off to the notes of musk and leather, and the sound of a purring engine and a deep voice, humming. Lucky Luce with a dad like this.

When we get back to the house, there’s no sign of the troops; the lights are off and the washing-up done, the smell of lemon Fairy Liquid floating in the air. Lucy Lou is sitting at the kitchen table in the dark.

‘Jesus Lucy. What are you doing up? It’s almost six o’clock,’ Mr O’D says as he switches on the overhead light, plunging the marble-topped, island-in-the-middle, high-tech kitchen into startling brightness.

‘Couldn’t sleep.’

She looks like a panda with her white face and black-ringed eyes, which almost starts me off.

‘How is she?’ she says to her dad, who seems pretty pissed to see her. And then to me, ‘How are you, Sammy?’

She’s wearing that look of concern that I’ve seen so many times before: when she caught me behind the bicycle sheds smoking dope, or when she couldn’t stop me stealing the Lycra pants in Topshop, or when I told her I had gone all the way with David, and Stu, and Brian (though not the others, not that). Poor old Luce.

‘How many stitches, Dad?’

Mr O’D rubs his forehead and stares out the window at the silhouettes of spiky branches in the night sky, making me think of the shadow-finger games I used to play with Dad on the bedroom wall.

‘Not many. It wasn’t me that did them, obviously.’

I can see Luce is relieved by this.