It was on the tip of Five’s tongue to say ‘I don’t do talk’ or something like it, he even had his mouth open. But then he shut his mouth, because he did, a little. With Dolores, who was gone, burned up or wearing sequins in the remains of a department store. Yes, she was a mannequin, but she’d been his only company for decades, the only one he could talk to.

There hadn’t been anyone safe enough in the Commission, and his family were buffoons. But Dolores was proof that he did kind of need someone around, the more so if he actually intended to commit to this ‘grow up’ thing. “I don’t promise that won’t be how someone gets stabbed in the femoral.”