When we walked out into the hall, we could see Debbie running from the corridor where the men’s bedrooms are, so that’s when I knew it was her who had done the screaming and most likely her that had sounded the alarm. All the staff have personal alarms attached to their belts and, if they press them, it makes the big alarm go off all over the unit. I remember a patient getting hold of one once and hiding it, then pressing it when he was bored and causing mayhem for days.

Anyway, Debbie looked seriously upset.

The three of us stood and watched as George and Femi came tearing out of the nurses’ station, and even though Debbie was trying to be professional and keeping her voice down when she spoke to them, once the alarm had stopped we all heard her say Kevin’s name and the look on the other nurses’ faces told us everything we needed to know.

‘Fuck,’ Shaun said. ‘Oh, Christ, oh fuck.’ He started scratching hard at his neck and chest, so I took hold of his arm and told him it was going to be all right.

‘Maybe the Thing got him,’ The Thing said.

I stepped away from them and moved as close as I could to where the nurses were huddled so as to try and hear a bit more, but George looked at me and shook his head. Then they all hurried back down the men’s corridor, presumably heading for Kevin’s room to take a look at what Debbie had found. A few minutes later, Debbie and Femi came back, grim-faced, and shortly after that George began herding those who had been in the other rooms on the men’s corridor towards the lobby. Most of them stumbled along peacefully enough, bleary-eyed, one or two clutching their duvets around them. A few were shouting about being woken up and demanding to know what was going on.

‘You can’t make me leave my room.’

‘I’m sorry, but—’

‘It’s my room.’

‘There’s been an incident—’

‘I don’t care.’

Once the bedrooms had been emptied – well, apart from Kevin’s, because that poor soul wasn’t going anywhere for the time being – George stood guard at the entrance to the corridor to make sure that nobody went back. He just stared and raised one of his big hands whenever anyone looked like they were about to. Under normal circumstances, that would probably have been Marcus’s job as ward manager, but he doesn’t work nights. I wondered if anyone had called him, if he was on his way in, but I don’t remember seeing him until the next day.

‘Where are we going to sleep?’ Ilias asked. ‘I’m tired.’

‘We will get it all sorted out,’ Femi said.