‘Like you escorted that last lot?’ Instantly she realized that she shouldn’t have tried to make a joke about the attack. It was still too raw for Robbie.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘That was wrong.’

Robbie was silent for a while then he looked up at Maeve. ‘I’ll make a better job of it than that whole mess,’ he said. ‘Do it properly, get a decent crew together. Take you on a trip to the countryside.’

‘I’ll hold you to that.’

‘Yeah, good. Good.’ Robbie appeared to brighten up.

‘You might never forgive me, though.’ Maeve stared at the ugly hole in Robbie’s leg.

‘I’ll forgive anything if it works …’

Maeve said nothing. If it works. She had no idea about that; she might just do more damage. There might not be anything in the wound.

After a while Jibber-jabber and Ella came back, carrying a steaming saucepan with surgical instruments rattling in the bottom. They were closely followed by Samira, who had found Lewis, Boggle and Whitney.

‘OK,’ said Maeve. ‘Lewis, you take his feet. Hold them down, sit on them, whatever it takes, but I don’t want him kicking about.’

‘Cool,’ said Lewis sleepily and he sauntered to the foot of the bed.

‘You two lie across his body, so he can’t move.’

Whitney giggled and raised her eyebrows at Robbie.

‘Why don’t we just take his arms?’ asked Boggle.

‘His arm’s cut and his shoulder’s been pulled about,’ said Maeve. ‘I don’t want to make it worse.’

She handed Robbie a wad of rolled-up bandage. ‘You better bite on this,’ she said.

He swallowed hard then clamped the wad between his teeth. He had a glassy-eyed, anxious look about him. Poor bastard. It was about to get a whole lot worse.

Samira put on rubber gloves and soaked everything in disinfectant. Once she was ready Maeve picked up the scalpel.

‘I’m going to open the wound up a bit,’ she said to Samira. ‘So we can get inside. Then you need to use the forceps to hold the edges apart so I can get the tweezers in. OK?’

‘OK.’ Samira looked as glassy-eyed and anxious as Robbie.

Maeve had read about this kind of surgery before, watched countless hospital programmes on the TV, but she’d never had to do anything like this in real life. She breathed out.

‘Hold him still …’

Sniggering and making rude comments, Boggle and Whitney manoeuvred into position and lowered their bodies across Robbie, pinning him to the bed, while Lewis casually took hold of his legs.

‘Ow,’ said Robbie, and he gave Boggle a filthy look. ‘I thought you was supposed to be my friend, Boggle.’

‘Moist,’ said Boggle, and he grinned at Whitney.