TEN
Mandy was still at Jack’s bedside. He’d had a little tussle with a nurse, but in the end they allowed Meesh onto the bed, and she snuggled into his good shoulder. Meesh, known as Spesh by Jack, was actually Michelle. Nobody knew her second name or whether she was six or eight years old, the doctors differed, and the girl had had such a traumatic upbringing she had either blanked all this information out, or never knew in the first place. Jack had rescued Meesh from a paedophile ring, from a filthy house where she had also witnessed her mother murdered. She had formed an immediate bond with Jack and Mandy, and vice versa. Jackie Philips, the child Psyche, who was looking after the tiny girl’s psychological welfare, had brought Meesh to the hospital, along with her foster mother Gail.
