She shifted minutely to say yes to this touch on her skin and his fingers slipped over her hip, up the contours of her body to the fullness of her breast. He firmly squeezed her flesh in his hands, pinching at her nipple, quietly, so as not to wake the other inhabitants of the room. She opened her mouth to let out a silent moan in the safe confusing blindness where she felt free to express and suppress. She bit her lip so as not to wake the others, feeling him hard against her back in the confines of this small sofa. She placed her own hand over his, guiding it from her breast downwards, opening her legs, instructing his fingers on how to relieve this jabbing teenage ache. She moaned, barely audibly.

‘Turn over,’ Si said, and for a moment his voice broke the illusion and briefly her pleasure dimmed. But no, she did as he bade; she turned over. To her surprise, she was wet enough and soon he was inside her. Dougie was back, touching her as Si made love to her. And she was going to come. For sure. The whole thing had taken less than one minute and she was going to come. And he was going to come. They both cried out with pleasure.

Yes, all was well in their marriage.

* * *

When Emma got to the unit the next day, she was told that Connie was lying comatose on her bed; she’d had a seizure at 4 a.m. This was not good news – firstly for Connie herself, but secondly, the clock was ticking for Emma’s statement on the case. And she still wasn’t in possession of all the facts. Before Emma went in to see Connie, she asked for the CT scan and was told she could watch the fit on the camera footage from the room.

She sat down to watch it in the security room with the guard. From the way he looked at her she wondered whether he had seen the fateful footage of her vomiting in the toilet. She was sure not; this CCTV was perfunctory most of the time. She sipped at the sweet tea brought to her by the tea caddy guy on his rounds. It tasted institutional but good. She rewound the footage. The last person in the room was Mrs. Ibrahim, handing out pills for the night. At this point Connie was sitting up in bed. Their interaction seemed brief and functional with Mrs. Ibrahim pausing at the door as she left the room, and saying something over her shoulder to which Connie flicked her two fingers before lying flat on her back and looking up at the ceiling – nothing unusual.