Happy Easter, he thought, and tried not to glower as he stomped through the hall to the front door. It had better be serious.

It was.

The girl standing on his veranda was a bedraggled, muddy mess. Age? Somewhere between twenty and thirty. It was hard to be more precise. She was five feet six or so, slightly built, and wearing jeans and a windcheater, both coated with mud, and with blood. One leg of her jeans was ripped to the knee, and there was blood on her bare shin.

What else? She was wearing one filthy shoe, but only one. The other foot was partly covered by a sock, but the sock had long abandoned the idea of being footwear.

Her brown-black curls were drooping in sodden tendrils to her shoulders. Her eyes were huge. Scared. A long scratch ran from her left eyebrow almost to her chin, bleeding sluggishly.

She was carrying one of the ugliest dogs he’d ever seen. Maybe an English bulldog? Fat to the point of grotesque, it lay limply in her arms-a dead weight.

‘Oh, thank God,’ the girl managed before he had a chance to speak. She shoved the dog forward, lurching like she was drunk. He grabbed the dog, then watched in dismay as she sank onto the veranda, put her head between her knees and held her head down with both hands.

Triage, he thought, his arms full of dog. Woman first, dog second.

Get rid of the dog.

Rain was blasting in from the east, reaching almost to the door, so he turned and laid the dog on the mat inside the hall. The dog sagged like a rag doll, but the girl was his priority.

‘What’s wrong?’ He caught her wrist. Her pulse was racing. She was sweating, and as he knelt beside her she started to retch.

‘H-help me,’ she stuttered, and couldn’t manage more.

A child’s sand bucket was lying on the veranda. He hauled it forward but she didn’t need it. This hadn’t been the first time she’d vomited tonight, then.

Now wasn’t the time for questions. He did a more careful visual examination as he waited for the nasty little interlude to be over.