‘You stink,’ Bob says. ‘You stink of fish.’

‘Was there a lot of blood?’ Ilias asks.

‘I don’t think it’s helpful to talk about that,’ Marcus says.

‘Where’s Debbie?’ Graham asks.

Now, it’s my turn. I’m sitting next to Shaun and he starts, nervous as a kitten, when I stand up suddenly. ‘What about some security?’

Marcus looks at me.

‘That’s a good idea,’ Tony says. ‘Stop the Thing coming in.’

‘Yeah, but what if the Thing is the security?’ Lauren asks.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Tony says.

Marcus is still looking at me. ‘What do you mean, Alice?’

‘Well, this place obviously isn’t safe, is it?’ I look around for some support and I’m pleased to see Lucy and Ilias nodding. ‘You have a duty of care and you’re supposed to keep us safe. I mean, that’s basically why we’re here, right? When you’re more likely to get killed on a closed national health ward than you are in the arse-end of Hackney on a Friday night, I think something needs to be done about it. I reckon we deserve to have some decent protection.’

Marcus looks at the bloke from the Trust.

The bloke from the Trust seems a little uncomfortable, but says, ‘It’s certainly something we can discuss.’

‘There we are,’ Marcus says.

‘A couple of big bastards with tasers,’ I say. ‘Or even better—’

Marcus holds up a hand. He says, ‘I think you’ve had your answer, Alice,’ and looks around for another question.

I sit down again and put my earphones in and spend most of the rest of the meeting wondering why Marcus is being so off with me. I also spend a few minutes asking myself why Lauren felt the need to be such a bitch to Tony and thinking how much I’ll enjoy telling Ilias exactly how much blood there was. The look on the hairy little sod’s face.

We all enjoy passing on the details of a proper drama, don’t we?

A quarter of an hour later, when the meeting’s breaking up, I amble across to Malaika and ask if she fancies escorting me outside for a cigarette. She immediately feels for her own pack and lowers her voice.

‘God, I’ve been desperate for one of you to ask.’

It’s drizzling a bit, so we stand close together beneath the overhang at the entrance to the unit. Malaika has crashed me one of her fags to save me the hassle of rolling my own, which is dead nice of her.

Like I said before, she’s one of the good ones, and the Brummie accent always cheers me up.

‘Police are coming back tomorrow,’ she says.

I nod and hiss out a stream of smoke. ‘They’ll be making an arrest probably.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Yeah, they’ll know who did it by now.’