Richard
As Elizabeth and I arrive, the ward sister wears a face that would strip the fur from a peach.
Is James behaving himself?
“The patient giving you trouble?”
She sniffs the disdain of curtain-twitchers everywhere. “Oh, it’s you, Mr Haswell. It’s not the patient, no. He isn’t capable of….”
“Thank you, Sister,” interrupts the doctor.
The nurse glowers but retreats. “What was that all about?” I ask.
The doctor lifts eyes to heaven. “How to put this? Your three friends were…. quite noisy…. last night.”
Elizabeth suddenly breaks into a fit of coughing, refusing flat out to meet my eye when I harrumph a cough back to her.
Ye gods…. The man’s had a bullet in him and the three of them are….
*****
Michael is there and both he and Charlotte look much better. He’s losing the circles
