I open my eyes. It’s morning. I’m lying on a sofa in a sitting-room I don’t recognise. This’ll have to stop. Apart from anything else, it’s getting boring. I’m reflecting on this when Tom charges in. ‘Jerry!’ he says urgently. ‘Does my face look different?’ It does. Even from several feet away it looks radically altered. His thin, strong, angular face, with the four-times broken nose as the centrepiece, has been replaced overnight with a fatter, more fleshy, almost circular one.
He kneels by my sickbed and shows it in profile. ‘Jerry, my lower jaw’s receded by about half an inch as well,’ he says. It has. His normally thrusting chin is this morning weak and indecisive. ‘And my bite’s different,’ he says, opening and closing his mouth with difficulty and some pain.
I drive him over to the casualty department of the local cottage hospital.
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