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“Youth,” Olivia clarified. “Grandma’s from Brooklyn.” And addressing her brother: “Red’s been flattened by an earthquake and a car today. I’m trying to convince him to see a doctor.”

“Where did the car hit you?” Xavier asked, hands still on the laptop’s keyboard.

“Uh…on the high street by the Red Cross shop.”

Xavier started to roll his eyes, managed to stop himself, and clarified. “Where on your body?”

“Uh…my hip. I think.” It was certainly the part that hurt most.

Meanwhile, the grandmother had shuffled off, saying she’d bring me some tea. The idea that I didn’t drink tea didn’t seem to be one that any of them seriously entertained.

“Did he hit his head?” Xavier addressed the question to his sister.

“I don’t know. It all happened so fast.” Olivia winced at the memory. “He might have hit it on the bonnet, or maybe when he hit the ground. We honestly weren’t going that fast. Colin had just pulled away from the lights, and he did brake too…”

“I’m not going to the hospital.” I shook my head and wished that I hadn’t. “Sophie’s still out there.”

“Sophie?” Xavier looked to Olivia for the answer again.

“His sister. She didn’t come back to…where they live.”

Xavier started to get up. “So, we call his parents, and they can call—”

“Red and Sophie live at the Togetherness Trust. You know the place.”

“We should call them then.” Xavier frowned.

The grandmother reappeared surprisingly quickly and pressed a big cup of tea into my hand. “Sugar’s on the table, honey.” She watched me with curious dark eyes, almost as if I were a wonder, an alien dropped from the vacuum of space into her living room.

The interrogation that followed proved gentle but thorough, concerning both my state of health and the situation with Sophie. Olivia suggested I call Sophie again, and I did. This time it wouldn’t even let me leave a message—the staff must have filled it up with useless demands…

Somewhat unreasonably, but quite possibly due in larger part to my bruised brain than my diagnosed fondness for saying “no,” I refused to go back to the Trust and insisted that I would pick up the hunt for Sophie, albeit without a clue where she might be at one a.m. I also refused to be taken to the emergency room, using the same threat of getting to my feet and walking out of there.

At some point I must have rested my eyes for too long. I remember Grandma Josephine saying, “Let the yoot sleep.” And I remember Xavier’s reluctance to…well…his reluctance to accept every part of the situation, and how his objections were softly but firmly bulldozed by the womenfolk.

I woke with a groan to find myself still on the sofa, stretched out and covered with a blanket. My head ached a bit, my hip throbbed, and I needed a pee. Otherwise, I seemed to be in one piece.

I reached the hall and heard noises from what turned out to be the kitchen. Xavier was there, wearing an apron that tried to style him as a bikini-clad beach babe. While he was occupied with frying eggs, Olivia read a newspaper. Where, beneath the apron, Xavier was dressed as if about to head off to the nineteenth century to work in a clerk’s office that Charles Dickens would capture in crushing detail, Olivia seemed set to join her colleagues at the offices of some fashion magazine or innovative advertising company. Something dynamic anyway.

“I fell asleep,” I muttered redundantly. “I should go.”

“Eat first.” Olivia clearly still felt guilty.

Xavier looked mildly disapproving but nodded me to a chair.

“Toilet’s at the end of the hall,” Olivia said helpfully.

I remembered Sophie with a jolt while peeing and nearly made a mess.

“I need to go find my sister,” I said on returning to the kitchen doorway.

“She might well be back by now,” Olivia said. “Hopefully she is.”

I’d already checked my phone. No messages from Sophie. And sent another text—the most urgent yet. No answer.

“You’d know already if you’d let us send you back.” Xavier began to serve me some of the fried eggs he must have intended for himself.

I let myself be convinced that ten minutes wouldn’t break the bank. She probably was back. She might give the support workers hell sometimes, but she wasn’t stupid. Well, not that stupid. She didn’t want us separated. At least I didn’t think she did.