She tugged the tourniquet into position on her arm and imagined who would find her body in the morning. It was a matter that should be considered. Paula wouldn’t want to burden another person with a distressing sight. But she figured that by administering the overdose on the examination bed in the consulting room, it would most likely be a medical professional who would find her, someone who’d dealt with similar things before and could handle it.

Before injecting the morphine, she thought about Anita again, wishing she’d spoken to her, said a proper apology, expressed her love. She considered calling her now but decided that would only end up upsetting her friend even more.

During those few moments of hesitation, Paula heard knocking on the door that opened into the car park of the medical practice. She stayed very quiet. Whoever it was would give up and go away if the place seemed deserted. But the knocking continued, louder and more insistent.

Paula took off the tourniquet and put the syringe up on a high shelf before she opened the consulting room door a small wedge. On the other side of the narrow corridor, the knocking on the external door kept going.

Then someone yelled out. ‘Hello? Are you in there? I can see your car.’

Paula recognised the voice—Ruby—and rushed to open the outer door. The girl stood there, blood smeared across her shirt, with the dirt bike lying on the paving behind her.

‘What happened?’ asked Paula, ushering the girl inside. ‘You’re hurt.’

‘Not me,’ Ruby said, and she took a step sideways so Paula could see Jye sitting on the planter box, with blood crusted on one side of his face, gluing his hair into sticky clumps.

Paula reached to pick the boy up, but Ruby said, ‘Careful! He’s got bits of glass in his head. I got most of it out but might be bits still in there.’

Paula took the kids into the consulting room and sat Jye on the exam bed. He was quiet and compliant as Paula checked his face and used tweezers to remove the last few slivers of glass embedded in his skin—luckily none too close to his eye. She started to clean up the lacerations, speaking softly to him, trying to be as gentle as possible. Even so, it must have stung quite sharply, but the boy barely flinched, silent and shut down.