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know. Is it still gross? Not if it’s gross. Is it?’
    ‘Tell you what,’ Chase said, taking off his leather jacket, ‘why don’t you judge for yourself ?’ He rolled up his sleeve and held out his left forearm. Holly recoiled, then moved back for a closer look. A crooked, X-shaped scar ran almost from wrist to elbow, smaller lines of wounded skin branching out from it.
    ‘Does it hurt?’ she asked, one hand hovering above his arm, afraid to touch it.
    ‘It bloody did at the time!’ Chase assured her. ‘Smashed both the bones, had a great jagged spike three inches long sticking out right through the skin there.’ He pointed, Holly making a high-pitched Eeeeeeew! ‘They had to bolt it all back together with titanium. So I’m sort of bionic now. Freaks ’em out when I go through the scanners at airports.’
    ‘Edward, that’s terrible!’ cried Nan, looking appalled. ‘You poor thing! Does it still hurt? How long did it take to mend?’
    ‘It was in a cast for nearly two months,’ Nina told her.
    ‘Yeah,’ Chase added. ‘When it finally came off, I had one arm bigger than the other.’
    ‘Just like when you were fifteen and had all those magazines under your bed,’ said Elizabeth, with the air of someone who’d just scored an unbeatable point.
    Chase held back a rude reply and turned instead to his grandmother. ‘It still hurts a bit sometimes, but it’s more or less fixed now. Had to be careful when I was training back up, though. Didn’t want to overdo things and have a bolt pop out through my arm.’
    Holly remained fascinated by the scar. ‘So now you’re okay again . . . could you beat just about anyone in a fight?’
    Chase nodded. ‘Why, got someone you want me to sort out?’
    ‘No, no!’ She paused, thinking. ‘Although there’s this absolute cow at school . . .’
    ‘Nah, I don’t hit girls,’ Chase told her. ‘Unless they’re a really, really bad person. But if you ever have any bloke trouble, just let me know and I’ll have words.’
    ‘Eddie,’ snapped Elizabeth, an angry warning.
    ‘So who could you beat?’ Holly asked, ignoring her. ‘Could you beat . . . Jason Bourne?’
    Chase laughed mockingly. ‘Doddle. He’s CIA, he’s a spook. They’re all wimps.’
    ‘What about Jack Bauer?’
    ‘Hmm. Tougher, but . . . yeah. No problem.’
    ‘James Bond?’
    ‘Which one?’
    ‘Any of them.’
    He pretended to consider it. ‘All of ’em except . . . Roger Moore,’ he said at last. ‘He’s the one I wouldn’t want to mess with. That eyebrow, I just can’t match it.’
    Holly giggled. ‘You used to be in the SAS, right? Could you beat the S B S?’
    ‘Course I could. The SAS is the best fighting force in the world. No contest. Why?’
    ‘Because there’s a girl in my class whose big brother is in the SBS, and she says that he says that the SAS are just a bunch of gayers.’
    ‘Holly, don’t say things like that,’ Elizabeth chided, although she was clearly amused by Chase’s affronted expression.
    ‘I’m just saying what she said he said!’
    ‘Some SBS guy said that, did he?’ Chase growled, irked not so much by the insult as its source.
    ‘What’s the SBS?’ Nina asked.
    ‘Special Boat Service,’ Elizabeth told her. ‘They’re supposedly much tougher than the SAS.’
    Chase scowled. ‘Oh, fu—’ His gaze flicked between his niece and his grandmother. ‘. . . sod the SBS.’
    ‘Fusod?’ Nina teased.
    ‘It’s . . . a military term.’
    ‘Oh, it is, huh?’
    ‘Well,’ said Elizabeth, pointing up the hill, ‘the SBS are based just up the road in Poole, so maybe you could go and challenge them to an arm-wrestling contest or something as pointlessly macho.’
    ‘Maybe I could,’ Chase replied scathingly. ‘ ’Cause that’s all serving your country’s about, being macho. I’m sure there’s all kinds of other worthwhile stuff I could have done instead in the last eighteen years. Any suggestions, Lizzie? I mean, with all your