THE WALK back was an agonizingly slow process. I should have known better. I should have secured a crutch, or brought my money with me in case I required a cab. I had enough, certainly, though I wasn’t sure that a cab would stop for someone attired as I was.
My journey consisted of a few steps and a short rest, some carefully-selected oaths, a few more steps, and another rest. It wasn’t long before I was limping badly, and I began to realise that my problems might extend beyond simple discomfort. I had thought that, because I could make it upstairs and down in the Greys’ house, I was healed or close to it, but it was a simple fact that the Greys’ staircase was a lot shorter than the trek I had chosen to undertake, and that there were chairs on both ends of it.
I couldn’t stop for long in
