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It wasn’t a look he recognised.

‘My baby?’ she said to no one in particular

. ‘Where is he?’

There was no strength to her voice and it came out as a half whisper, but it was manic nonetheless.

For a moment no one spoke.

Eventually Zoe stepped forwards. She took hold of her hand.

‘He’s coming, Steph,’ she said. ‘You remember? The nurse is feeding him.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Flynn replied, relaxing back against the pillow. ‘That’s right. I’d forgotten. The nurse is feeding him.’

The room descended into silence.

Flynn broke it.

‘Why is the nurse feeding him?’ she said, tears rolling down her face. ‘Why aren’t I feeding him?’

‘You can’t, Steph,’ Zoe said gently. ‘Not just yet. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal and your body has stopped producing milk. The doctor says it shouldn’t be long before your system reboots, though.’

‘Here’s the little scrapper now,’ one of the nurses said.

Another nurse walked into the room and headed to the bed. She handed Flynn a small bundle swaddled in blankets and a bonnet.

The bundle sighed. Poe could see a wrinkled face, eyes tightly shut. His heart missed a beat. The last time he’d seen him, he’d been in a canvas bag on Edward Atkinson’s bed.

Wet and red and covered in vernix, the greasy substance that protects the skin from amniotic fluid, he’d been alive but only just.

Poe had got there just in time. The doctors he’d spoken to said that a baby born before the thirty-seventh week of pregnancy would ordinarily need specialist support if it were to survive for more than a few hours. The marine unit had rushed Scrapper and Flynn to Furness General Hospital. While Scrapper was being assessed in the neonatal unit Flynn was undergoing emergency trauma surgery. The Curator had also been taken there and, for a while, all that had separated the three of them were walls and armed guards. Zoe had flown Flynn and Scrapper down to the private hospital as soon as they were stable enough to leave.

Flynn hugged her son. A look came over her face. The transformation was immediate and remarkable.

She no longer looked small and vulnerable.

She looked fierce, like a lioness protecting her cub.

‘Hi, Poe,’ she said, refusing to look away from her son’s face. ‘Where’s Tilly?’

Poe waited for the nurse to attach the finger-clip that monitored her vitals before he replied.

‘Still in Cumbria. She’s going through the Curator’s computer. I’m hoping to hear from her soon.’

‘Tilly will untangle it all,’ Flynn said.

‘She will,’ Poe agreed. She almost had. He was waiting for a text to say she was ready to brief him.

‘It’s funny, Poe,’ she said, ‘but you don’t realise how many people you hate until you have to name a baby.’

He smiled. ‘I can imagine.’

‘Zoe wanted to call him Washington but I said it’s a foolish name.’

‘He’s been through enough already,’ he agreed.

Flynn laughed as a tiny hand grabbed her finger.