The face too was a blur, a badly focused camera, a shadow of a shadow. It had long hair, he was sure of that, and smelt of a warm tent in the summers of his childhood. ‘Ow!’ Ever the master of wit and repartee was Peter Maxwell. ‘Steady,’ the voice was clearer now. ‘You’ve had a nasty bump on the head. Don’t get up too quickly.’ He found himself sitting upright, his temples feeling as if they’d been squeezed through a mangle. There was a screen in front of him and a table with bloody cotton wool. A rather luscious girl was bending over him with a roll of bandage in her hand. ‘I’m not sure we’ll need this,’ she was saying. Maxwell felt the back of his cranium and immediately wished he hadn’t. Whatever the opposite of frontal lobotomy was, he’d just had one. ‘Would it be too corny to ask where I am?’ He tried to focus on her. ‘You’re in sick bay at Beauregard’s,’ she told him. ‘A floor down from where we found you. I’m Sophie, by the way. Sophie Clark.’ ‘Peter Maxwell.
