‘They’ll stay with me until their mother is well enough to care for them again. Or until their father can get here.’

‘Here’s Dr Blayden. He’s here to help me with the injuries. He helped operate on your mother last night, kids. He’s a hero, right when we need him.’

The kids looked up at him, doubtful, looking for a real-life hero. Ben smiled and crossed to the little group, squatting down beside them and delving in his pocket for sweets. He carried them everywhere, for just such an emergency as this.

‘Tell me your names,’ he said, folding the sweets into their hands before they had a chance to draw back.

‘Nicki,’ the little girl whispered, staring down at her lolly, while the boy huddled behind his grandmother, keeping his hand closed over the precious sweet. ‘And my brother is Lanie.’

‘Is your mother’s name Louie?’

‘Yes.’

‘I did help fix her last night,’ he told them.

‘Nicki and Lanie were with their mother when the men came,’ Lily said briefly, and Ben thought Lily knew what she was doing. Traumatised kids had to talk about what happened. ‘Louie ran with them. She ran to her mother’s.’

The bullet had pierced Louie’s shoulder as she’d run. Ben winced. What sort of criminals shot at a mother, fleeing with her children?

‘I think these men are very, very bad and very, very stupid,’ he told the children. ‘But our soldiers have them all in one place now and they can’t hurt anyone. And your mother is getting better. You can visit her now if you like.’

‘I was just coming to tell them that,’ Lily said.

‘She’ll feel much better after she’s seen you,’ Ben said, and he smiled at the old lady. ‘And after she’s seen her mother.’ He delved back into his pocket and brought out six more sweets. They were sold as Traffic Lights, round, flat shining discs, red, green and yellow. ‘Choose one more each,’ he told the children. ‘And then I want you to choose two each to take to your mother. Can you do that?’