How come she knew a guy like Bernie? 'Friend of a friend of a friend,' she said vaguely. 'I don't usually go to parties. I end up standing in a corner like a standard lamp. I'm not much good at small talk. I was taught by nuns until I was eleven -you learn silence early on.' Jackson's sister, Niamh, had been a convent girl. When she was thirteen she announced she wanted to become a nun. Their mother, despite being a devout Irish Catholic, was terrified. She had been looking forward to a future where a married Niamh popped in and out of her house, trailing babies in her wake. To everyone's relief, Niamh's enthusiasm for becoming a bride of Christ proved to be short-lived. Jackson was only six at the time but even then he knew that nuns spent their lives imprisoned away from their families and he couldn't bear the idea that Niamh, so full of life, could be shut away from him for ever.

And then, of course, she was.

He could feel his headaches breeding, stacking themselves one upon the other.

When he woke a second time the girl was sitting there again, blinking at him like a baby owl. She was speaking nonsense. 'Dr Foster went to Gloucester, all in a shower of rain.'

Out in the larger ward, Jackson could hear children's voices singing Christmas carols, quite badly. He noticed for the first time some half-hearted gaudy decorations hanging in his room. He had forgotten all about Christmas. He wondered if the girl was something to do with the carol concert. She looked about the same age as Marlee and was gazing at him intently as if she was expecting him to do something extraordinary.

'They said you were a soldier,' she said.

'A long time ago.'

'The nurse said. That's how they knew your blood group.'

'Yeah.' His voice was still croaky. He was a weak version of himself, a flawed clone, everything working but nothing quite right. 'My dad was a soldier.'

He struggled into a sitting position and she helped him with the pillows. 'Yeah? What regiment?' he asked, unexpectedly entering into his conversational comfort zone.

'Royal Scots,' the girl said.

'Were you here yesterday?' he said. 'The day before today,' he clarified. He was pleased to see that he was getting the hang of time again. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, that was how it went, one day after the next. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Julia had done Macbeth at Birmingham Rep, a crazed, blood-boltered Lady Macbeth. 'Acting with her hair again,' Amelia snorted in the seat next to him. Jackson thought she was good, better than he'd expected anyway.

'No,' she said. 'I've only just found you.'

He wondered if she was one of those volunteers, like prison visitors, who come and see people who don't have anyone else.

(Because apparently he didn't.) Perhaps the army had sent her, like a care package.

'You would have bled to death,' she said. She seemed very interested in his blood. His veins ran with the blood of strangers, he wondered if that had any implications for him. Had he lost his immunity to measles? Had he acquired a predisposition to something else? (Something that ran in the blood.) Was he carrying the DNA of strangers? There were a lot of unanswered questions surrounding his transfusion. Was this girl one of his donors? Too young surely.

'Exsanguinated,' she said, pronouncing it carefully.

'Right.'

'Exsanguinated,' she said again. 'Sangria comes from the same root, the Latin for blood. Blood-red wine. Wine-dark sea.'

'Do I know you?' Jackson said. It suddenly struck him that she might be a fellow survivor of the train crash. She had a nasty bruise on her forehead.

'Not really,' she said. Not a very helpful answer. 'Are you going to eat that toast?' she asked, eyeing up the unappetizing food still in front of him.

'Knock yourself out,' Jackson said, pushing the bed-tray towards her. 'Have we met?' he pursued.

'In a way,' she said, her mouth full of toast.

His headache, blissfully absent when he woke, was beginning to throb again. 'You don't remember me, do you?' she said. 'Sorry, no. There's a lot ofthings I don't remember at the moment.

Are you going to tell me or do I have to guess? I really don't think I have the energy to guess.'

'You wouldn't be able to. It would take you for ever.' She looked pleased with herself at this idea. She took a little dramatic pause from eating toast and said, 'I saved your life.'

I saved your life. What did that mean? He didn't understand. 'How?'

'CPR, artery compression. At the train crash. At the side of the track.' 'You saved my life,' he repeated. 'Yes.'

At last he understood. 'You're the person that saved my life.'

'Yes.' She giggled at his slowness. He found himself grinning, in fact he couldn't stop grinning. He felt oddly grateful that his life had been saved by a giggling child and not some burly paramedic.

'They did their bit, as well,' she said. 'But it was me that kept you alive in the beginning.'

She had breathed life into him, literally. His breath was hers. Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath if We; and man became a living being. More rotelearning from some murky place in his spiritual past.

What on earth could he say to her? It took a while but Jackson got there eventually.

'Thank you,' he said. He was still grinning.

'How about the cornflakes?You gonna eat them?'

'So, technically speaking, you belong to me.'

'I'm sorry?' Her name was Reggie. A man's name.

'You're in my thrall.' She seemed delighted by the word 'thrall'.

'You can only be released by reciprocation.' 'Reciprocation?' 'Ifyou save my life.' She smiled at him and her small features were illuminated. 'Plus, I'm responsible for you now until you do.' 'Do what?' 'Save my life. It's a Native American belief. I read about it in a book.' 'Books aren't all they're cracked up to be,' Jackson said. 'How old are you?' 'Older than I look. Believe me.'

What did she mean he belonged to her? Perhaps he had mortgaged his soul after all, not to the devil but to this funny little Scottish girl.

Dr Foster put her head round the door of the ward and, frowning at the girl, said, 'Don't tire him out with talking. Five more minutes,' she added, holding up her hand in an emphatic gesture as if they needed to count her fingers to know what five was.

'Do you understand?' she said pointedly to Reggie.

'Totally,' the girl said. To Jackson, she said, 'I have to go anyway, I have a dog waiting outside for me. I'll be back.'

Jackson realized he was feeling much better. He had been saved. He had been saved for the future. His own.

When you had a future a couple of nurses could gang up on you and remove your catheter without any anaesthetic, or even any warning, and then force you out of bed, and make you hobble in your flimsy, open-backed hospital gown to the bathroom, where they encouraged you to 'try and pee' on your own. Jackson had never previously appreciated that such a basic bodily function could be both so painful and so gratifYing at the same time. I piss therefore I am.

He would look at everything differently from now on. The reborn bit had finally kicked in. He was a new Jackson. Alleluia.

Dr Foster mnt to Gloucester '''ALL IN A SHOWER OF RAIN. HE STEPPED IN A PUDDLE RIGHT UP TO his middle and never went that way again." I bet people quote that to her all the time.'

'Who?'

'Dr Foster.'

'I bet they don't,' Jackson Brodie said.

She had finally found him and now she was keeping a faithful vigil by his bedside, Greyfriars Reggie.

Like Chief Inspector Monroe before her, Dr Foster didn't really seem to believe Reggie when she said that she had saved Jackson Brodie's life. 'Really?' Dr Foster said sarcastically. 'I thought we did that in the hospital.' She had seemed harassed by Reggie's questions about Jackson Brodie's condition. 'Who are you?' Dr Foster asked bluntly. 'Are you a relative? I can only talk about his medical condition to close relatives.'