The techs who ran the MRI had been seeing me and Lesley on a regular basis since the summer – god knows what they thought I had. Some form of rare brain cancer I suppose. I must have been getting used to the machine, because, despite the sledgehammer sound of the magnetic coils, I drifted off to sleep mid-scan.

Saturday

Saturday

23. Warren Street

23

Warren Street

I woke up in a private room, the same one Nightingale had been stashed in when he got shot, I thought, to find Lesley asleep in a chair by my bed. She can’t sleep in the mask so she was barefaced but with her head twisted awkwardly away from the door to make sure nobody could look in and see her face. Her mask was clutched in one hand, ready for instant donning if I woke up.

In sleep, her face looked just as horrible but weirdly more like a face. I found it easier to look at when I knew she wasn’t looking back at me – judging my reactions. It was dark outside but this time of year that could be late afternoon or early morning. I weighed up not waking Lesley against her probable reaction should she catch me staring at her face without permission.

I lay back in my bed, closed my eyes and groaned theatrically until Lesley woke up.

‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I’ve got it back on.’

I had an inkling how long I’d been asleep when I had to rush to the bathroom down the corridor and spend what seemed an inordinate amount of time having a wee. After a shower and a change into a new and clean but otherwise identical open-back hospital gown, I climbed gratefully back into my bed and went back to sleep.

I woke up to daylight and the smell of McDonald’s – my stomach rumbled.

Lesley had returned with an unauthorised dinner, the newspapers and reassurances that Kumar and Reynolds had both escaped with minor cuts and bruises.

‘And Miss FBI,’ said Lesley. ‘What was all that about?’

In exchange for a Big Mac and the promise that she’d fetch me some clean clothes I told her all about Peter Grant’s adventures underground. She particularly liked the Holland Park rave and the part where I hallucinated myself back into the fourteenth century.

‘I bet he was fit,’ she said. ‘All these supernatural types are fit.’

I was almost afraid to ask. ‘Did we make the papers?’

Lesley held up a tabloid with the understated headline TERROR ON THE UNDERGROUND. I pointed out that they’d missed the Christmas angle so Lesley held up another tabloid with XMAS TUBE FEAR covering the whole front page. I was tempted to lie back down and pull the covers over my head.