I looked down and noticed that I too was dressed for the beach; a one-piece swimsuit in black with contrasting white pumps. They weren’t my shoes, they weren’t my feet. It wasn’t even my body. Different, taut and excitingly  . . . other. It felt like Birgitta’s missing husband’s body.

I corrected myself. I wasn’t like Birgitta’s missing husband. I was Birgitta’s missing husband. In love with her, and loved by her. Together, as one.

‘Is this really me?’ I asked, somewhat stupidly.

Birgitta blinked at me with a look of mild amusement.

‘You’re Charlie now, my Charlie,’ she said with a giggle. ‘Try not to think about the facility and HiberTech Security. Just today and tomorrow, forty-eight hours. You and me. What Dreams May Come.’

‘What Dreams May Come,’ I replied, looking around. ‘Where is this place?’

She laughed again. She didn’t need to tell me; I already knew. We were on the Gower Peninsula. I’d been there many times as a child; the view of Worm’s Head and the rusting passenger liner was stuck to the inside of my head like glue.

She looked at me again and smiled.

‘No matter what, there will always be the Gower.’

We both laughed at the comment, which was cheesy and utterly true, all in one.

‘I love you, Charlie.’

‘I love you, Birgitta.’

The waves boomed and the seagulls cackled, a beach ball bounced past and the same child with the same gurgle of laughter chased after it. I knew then exactly where and when I was. I had found the high point in Birgitta and Charles’ relationship, the precise moment when everything was beautiful and wonderful and pristine and right, before the shadows drew on and the Winter closed in. The holidays I’d spent there had been high points for me, too, small oases of joy in an otherwise dismal, Pool-trapped existence.

‘Happy snap?’ said a photographer holding a Polaroid. ‘Proper tidy you’ll look and as reasonably priced as—’

*   *   *

— I was suddenly awake, drenched in sweat, my heart thumping so rapidly in my chest that I felt it might burst. I sat up and flicked the light switch but there was nothing; the only glow was from the emergency lights, which had automatically switched on. Hydro Twelve, recently on the fritz, looked as though it had failed.

Something in the room struck me as odd and out of place, but it took me a moment or two to figure out what it was: Clytemnestra was missing. I froze, not wanting to make a single noise, lest she knew where I was. The ornate frame was still there, the background still there – painted curtains, painted marble steps, even the drops of painted blood on the painted floor. But of Queen Clytemnestra, there was nothing. It looked as though she had simply stepped out of the frame.