“What? Never mind me, what about you? Let me look after you. You’re bleeding.”

“I just bit my lip, it’s nothing. How did you end up in this state?”

“I beat the man who works for me into a pulp. He might die of it. I’m not sure. I tried not to kill him.”

“I see.” She knelt by the tea-chest and took out the first-aid kit.

“Don’t you want to know why?”

“Do I? You tell me.” She pushed him into a chair and knelt at his feet.

Ellen had done this for him too. The memory was sharp and painful, like standing on glass. Nights and mornings when he came home with cuts and bruises, small fractures, grazes, the occasional long deep slice; she cleaned them all, never a word, just disinfectant and plasters and bandages. She never made eye contact while she did this. It was as if she was pretending he and she were both somewhere else, and this was happening to some other people temporarily inhabiting their skins, other darker people cleaning wounds incurred in mysterious circumstances while the bodies’ true owners were away.

“Have you broken these fingers or can you still bend them?”

Once he staggered home with a gunshot wound, just a glancing shot that ricocheted off his arm and then whizzed away into a wall somewhere, but the pain had been immense, not just the graze but the burn of the hot bullet, and the blood that poured out of him as if it was never going to stop. He should have gone to the hospital but he hadn’t. Instead he spent a week in bed, feverish and sleepless, while Ellen went to her GP and told him, her face blank and innocent, that she had another nasty bout of cystitis and could she please have some antibiotics? Neither of them with any idea if the capsules she left on his bedside table were even any good for the bacteria that gnawed briefly at his arm, then vanished, leaving a shiny pink scar in their wake.

“Are these teeth marks?”

Once a day, Alicia crept into his room, awed and solemn, while Ellen whispered, ‘Daddy’s sleeping, don’t wake him.’ Once, as she peeled off unpleasant dressings while he tried and failed to hold back the tears because it hurt so damn much, he whispered, ‘Ellen. It’s all right. They’re not coming after… ’ She put her hand over his mouth and hissed fiercely, ‘Don’t tell me.’ Then she leaned forward and whispered, so softly he could barely hear her, ‘If I don’t know anything they can’t make me talk.’

And now it was years later, and his daughter was out in the dark and someone else was patching up his wounds. Ava was struggling to tie the bandage.

“Leave it,” he said, taking his hand from hers.

“I haven’t finished yet.”

“It’ll be fine. I should be looking after you.”

“I don’t need looking after.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Stop apologising.”

“It’s been a bad night but that’s no excuse. I – I know this is what men always say, but I’ve never – and I never will again. I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you if you’ll let me.”