Sinclair gave his name to the nurse sitting behind the hospital reception desk and then stepped outside and waited on the gravel path. He didn’t like being inside the building, but each Friday he came to visit Josh and walk with him around the gardens when the weather and his shifts permitted. Josh had been a patient since they returned from Africa, the experience from both there and in India before that had taken its toll on him and from the moment Sinclair had cut him down from the fence with blood and brain on his face he had been traumatised. As Sinclair waited, he watched two inmates arguing over a hat and laughed as they both pulled it out of shape trying to wrestle it from the grasp of the other.
‘Pack that up you two.’ He bawled at them, stifling a laugh as one let go and the other fell onto his backside and started crying. After twenty five years in the Army he didn’t need stripes or a uniform to inflict his authority. His voice was enough. He had seen the biggest soldiers tremble when he got started. He sat down on a wooden bench and thought about Josh. For some unknown reason he had taken immediately to the skinny boy, the first time he had set eyes on him, over four years before in Chatham. He leaned back with one arm over the back of the bench and closed his eyes. With the warm English sun on his face, the smell of roses and the sounds of birds singing, he forgot he was in the East End of London. He thought about the first time he had seen Josh.