Mark feels like shit. Like he’s got a stonking hangover, a killer sore throat and a bucketload of shame. He didn’t want his mum to see him before he had a shower, and yet here she is, sat next to him in a hospital bed, not only contending with his pervasive stink but also having to watch a machine breathe for him, and various tubes and medicines keep him alive. He’s been conscious for about half an hour now, the breathing tube pulled out by a nurse called Samantha, but his throat still feels like it’s lined with sixty-grit sandpaper.

‘The doctor said you were lucky, no long-term injuries,’ his mum says, trying her best to sound upbeat. ‘He said you’d be able to come home soon.’

Mark doesn’t respond. He’s been in the hospital for less than a day, and aware of being there for less than an hour, but he can’t imagine leaving. It’s like he’s locked in the present. The past and the future both feel out of bounds.

‘But also that the police are on their way,’ she continues gently. ‘I met them this morning. Two detectives. I forget their names, but they seemed nice enough.’

‘I don’t want to talk to the police.’ He thinks about the drugs in the squat, the primary school he crept into.

‘I know you don’t like to make a fuss about stuff, Mark, but someone strangled you. They could have killed you. That kind of dangerous criminal shouldn’t be roaming the streets.’

An image of Rudy comes into his head. His mundane expression when he kicked Mark in the ribs. That was a punishment for nothing, so it’s not surprising that he’d up his game when Mark nicked his gear. ‘This is London, Mum,’ he grumbles. ‘Stuff like this happens all the time.’

‘Between gangs, maybe. But not to people like you. Why were you even in that old shop? The nurse said you’d been sleeping there?’

Mark closes his eyes. He deserves this inquisition, and so much more, but he doesn’t know how to answer his mum’s questions. How to tell her that he got chucked out of two homes for being violent, and then lost his job. That his friend died, but instead of honouring his memory, he turned his grief and guilt for the part he played into hatred, terrorising an innocent woman, and then her child. That he stole from a drug dealer, smoked what he nicked and probably deserved to be taught a lesson.

‘I don’t need to know though, not if you don’t want to tell me. I’m just glad you’re alive, and that I can take you back to Cambridge.’

Mark’s face cracks. Her generosity is too overwhelming. He lifts his hands up to hide his tears, but he knows his body gives him away.