It occurred to him that he if he started to vomit, he would be perfectly justified in having done so.

He felt Maggie grab hold of his chin and slap him hard around the face. “You need a doctor, Jimmy,” she said. “Or a trip to the hospital. There’s not much else I can do. Your eye’s a fucking mess.”

“No doctors,” Hopewell said. “Just do what you can. Take the swelling down. Clean away any discharge. And drain the pus.”

“While all that sounds absolutely delightful, I’m not fucking qualified to do any of it.”

Hopewell pointed to the first-aid kit. “How hard can it be?”

“Guess you’re about to find out,” Maggie said.

She stared into the dark reach of the hole; the cold shadow in Hopewell’s eye, for the time being, allowed her to look.

* * *

Kate offered Father Hedley an abbreviated version of the night’s events and drank the warm tea Alison McCray had provided. She kept her eyes on Billy’s sleeping form through a glass partition that separated the living quarters from a cluttered private study; Father Hedley had gently placed him on a collapsed sofa, its stuffing spewing out and insulating the boy from the chill. He slept fitfully, each troubled utterance interrupting Kate’s account, and they would wait while she went through to the study and sat with her son, laying her palm on his cheek and calming him with the heat of her hand. She had never felt less equipped to deal with a situation, and as she stared at her own fingers caressing the cheek of her sleeping child, she was reminded of the breakdown she had set in motion; and granted a fleeting, horrifying glimpse of how it might end.

Father Hedley waited for her to finish her tale and then reached out and took her hand. His fingers felt as warm and oily as hot wax.

“What do you need?” he asked.

Kate stared at him, a little drained by laying out the details with such clinical detachment. She was playing the words she had just spoken aloud over in her head and they sounded ridiculous; a charmless fable of the princess and the villain, when it could be argued that quite the reverse was true.

“I don’t really know…” she said, turning to Jasper and Alison and seeing two tired faces staring back. They looked hopelessly old and she thought she saw Alison’s smile slip a little, like an eroding coastline, until eventually it fell away completely.

“Just somewhere to rest up till morning, Mike,” Jasper said. “And maybe a spot of breakfast to send us on our way. You still burning sausages on that damn skillet?”

Father Hedley laughed. “They taste better that way.” He stood up and glanced through the glass at Billy. “Maybe we should leave the child there,” he said. “He looks at peace.”

Kate thought so too. Billy seemed so small lying on the broken sofa that she wanted to weep. Not for the first time that evening she felt the dreadful weight of her actions bearing down on them. How quickly their world had changed; how swiftly she had brought their old life to an end.

“Perhaps I’ll sleep down here too,” she said, fearful of leaving Billy unattended.

“Nonsense. The one thing this place isn’t short of is guest rooms. You can have the small room at the end of this corridor. If he wakes up, you’ll be the first to hear him. You need your rest too, my dear. I expect the next few days may be more trying than you think.”

The idea sounded sensible in principle, but she knew how terrified and disoriented Billy would be if he woke up alone in Father Hedley’s study. She was overly conscious of having uprooted him once tonight; the very least she could do was be there to comfort him when he awoke.

The others could sense her reluctance and Jasper drew her to one side while Father Hedley and Alison cleared away the cups.

“You have to sleep, child,” he said.