The panic is a more effective distraction than the ant panini illusion and for more than forty minutes his brain can congratulate itself on its brilliance. With the primary function of protection rooted so deeply in the amygdala, it is only fulfilling its evolutionary purpose in side-stepping the larger problem. Which finally downs him, as a lion’s paw-swipe will down a wildebeest some considerable time after claws slice flesh.

Is it possible?

Flora was jumping for Merriweather’s charity. He didn’t question the coincidence at the time, only winced at the surgical accuracy with which the universe administers guilt. But what if it wasn’t coincidence? What if it was meaningful? What if Merriweather recruited Flora, through her friend, recruited the friend first with the singular purpose of—

No, he tells himself, ridiculous. The instructor was killed too. Doctor her parachute, maybe, but doctor his? Unless—

His mind is running around him in circles, barking. There are any number of scenarios. What if the parachute instructor had also crossed Merriweather? Then again, someone who will murder an innocent girl for her father’s crimes would hardly baulk at inflicting collateral damage—

For Christ’s sake, snap out of it, Logan! On the so-called evidence of the common letter S and a bereavement, you’d make your old squash partner, charitable do-gooder and CBE-awardee a murderer?

Something is going badly wrong with Logan’s eyesight and it takes some moments for him to locate the problem in his rapid, irregular breathing. He tries to slow his breath but his lungs are panicking independently of the notional adult in charge. Jules, he thinks, Jules will soothe him.

But Jules is not answering her phone. Hard to believe: she always answers him. He tries The Brockenhurst House. The mobile. Brockenhurst again. The mobile again, and this time a message, Jules, please… just please. Ring me back. Something terrible… please. Incoherent enough to get her attention. But minutes pass and Jules doesn’t respond.

He is in free fall. The accident report gave the heights at which the main and reserve parachutes were deployed and failed. Cause of failure for both chutes undetermined. Sometimes these things happen and no one knows why. Logan is at two thousand six hundred feet, and the main canopy has failed to open. He is cutting it loose. What might be the rest of his life is whistling past his ears, and the Surrey Hills are greener than he has ever seen them, a wide grinning expanse of cemetery green. He is at nineteen hundred feet and tugging the cord for the reserve.

And then his phone rings.

Jules, he says, thank God.

Logan? It isn’t Jules, it’s—

Gabrielle Salmon. Not long now until he’s swallowed into Surrey turf, the wide eyes of daisies gazing at him impassively as he travels past them into burrows and wormholes.

Are you—?

No.