"Oh desperately," she says in the rapturous tones of, 'My dear Mr Ginsberg, you really do say the nicest things.'

Propping herself up on one elbow, Fitcher pauses to examine-- ah yes. She pokes her fingers through the lapel of her mottled coat from the inside, wiggling them through the slash. "Now there's something which will need some stitching." The coat, not her skin. The layers beneath have absorbed the mutilating slash very nicely indeed.