Charlie himself starts moving. As he draws closer he comes to understand his destination. Mowgli. Grendel. The gun. Even so, his eyes are locked onto Livia and Thomas. The former has fallen to her knees by Lady Naylor’s side; is untangling her mother’s face from the mass of undone hair and soon finds her hands bloodied. As for the latter: for a moment Charlie thinks that it is fear that drives Thomas to such haste. He killed Julius earlier that night; broke him, not one breath rising out of the wreckage of his body. And yet he rose, a dark Christ. Who is to say he will not rise again; jerk up and scuttle off into the dark? But then Charlie sees Thomas tug at Julius, pull his emaciated arms halfway through the bars. Thomas is not checking for movement. He is trying to shake Julius awake. Let him rise, his action seems to be saying. Let him scuttle. It would acquit Thomas of something at least.

And on Charlie walks, steadily, mechanically, as though in a dream. He passes Livia; sees that Lady Naylor is alive, sees her daughter trying to revive her first with words then with frightened little slaps, to the good cheek, the other mangled by lacerations and welts. Livia’s eyes plead for his help but Charlie has a more urgent destination. Here, near the table, the ground is covered in glass shards. They crunch at his every step. He reaches the table, the gun; pockets it and feels some tension fall from him. Next to it a beaker of blood rests calmly on the table; two steps away, Grendel is rocking his charge, fingers spread along Mowgli’s back. From this angle, it looks as though two heads are rising from his trunk, one old and kindly, the other childish, mottled by fever but mirroring the other in its boundless calm. It is this calm that thrusts the Smoke back into Charlie’s lungs and colours his breath with the plume of disgust.

“You shot him,” he says needlessly, the words drifting over to Grendel and the boy in a sulphur haze and moving through them without a ripple. “We argued about it once. Whether it is possible to kill a man righteously, without Smoke.” Then Charlie adds, quietly, angrily: “I did not think then that it would be so horrible.”

But when Grendel turns to look at Charlie, the angel’s face is as placid as ever, untouched by doubt or self-reproach.

“Hush now,” he says. “You will frighten the child.”