Something is definitely wrong. Sliding out from under the duvet, he pads to the bathroom, closes the door before turning on the light wired to a thrumming extractor. The unfriendly smell of the wrong kind of sweat. He peels off his T-shirt, slips it under the lid of the laundry bin. Running a sink full of water, he dabs a hot flannel under his arms. Some thought sharked into his sleep. What was it? He blinks to accommodate the brightness, peers into his own reluctantly awake eyes… and knows.

It was her. Gabrielle Salmon. Too… too everything. Too alluring. Too clever. Too odd. Too perfect.

And too convenient.

Say you wanted to ruin a man. Say you wanted to test his allegiance to rational principle. Say you knew that his weakness lay in the female sex, in the conquest of reasonable objection and C-cup breasts. You would send such a woman. A beautiful Salmon, slippery and scaled. A woman named after an angel, the angel, not coincidentally, of communication. Who purports to communicate – God! – with your smashed dead daughter.

He grips the edge of the sink as the tendons in his legs lose their tension, thigh muscles shake; he sits on the edge of the bath and then, as that feels too precarious, lowers himself all the way to the floor.

She’s a trap.

‌Scrambled

His filing is not what it was. It takes nearly two hours to locate the thing he is looking for – not in the pile on the desk, not in the five piles on the floor by the bookcase, not in his briefcase, and not, certainly not, in the filing cabinet under A for articles. But he finds it eventually, bookmarking a novel he was half-reading on the train three months ago. Jules knocks, tentatively opens the door.

You all right, love? You’re up early.

Couldn’t sleep, he says, waving her away. He needs to read it. He needs to do it now. He needs to do it without his wife’s gaze boring into his forehead. She hovers for five or six seconds, then clicks the door into place.

The article that led him to Gabrielle Salmon unfolds in his hands. And attached to it – now he remembers – the yellow Post-it that shepherded it into his view. In personality-free capitals:

INTERESTING, NO? – S

He makes a call.

Sean? Logan.

Sean laughs. Why do you always say that? Your name comes up when it rings, you know.

I know. Listen, do you remember a few months ago, you sent me an article about human consciousness?

I sent you a what?

A scientific paper. ‘Creating God in the Human Brain’?

Creating GOD? Logan, are you okay? Jules said you’ve been—

I’m fine. Never mind. See you next week.