‘There was a striped towel,’ I said, as memories started to return, firing randomly around inside my mind like lottery balls, ‘and a beach ball. A child, a girl, laughing. A woman in a swimsuit, a wrecked liner – the Argentinian Queen.’

‘It’s called Arousal Confusion,’ came the woman’s voice from the darkness. ‘You won’t know shit for a couple of minutes and you’ll talk utter bollocks.’

‘She took a Polaroid,’ I said, ‘and the orange-and-red parasol was of spectacular size and splendour.’

‘As I said,’ remarked the voice, ‘utter bollocks. Your mind has been dormant, and your memory is still remapping. Until it does, you’ll be all over the shop. Can you remember your name?’

I lay for a few minutes in the blackness, my eyes still gummed shut, and waited for my thoughts to gather.

‘Charlie Worthing,’ I said as soon as the fact popped into my head, ‘BDA26355F. I’ll be twenty-three on the ninth after Springrise and I’m resident at room five-oh-six at the Melody Black, Cardiff.’

‘Better, but still nonsense,’ said the voice, ‘but to go back to my initial enquiry: you told Laura and Fodder you were leaving on the last train. So: what are you still doing here?’

I had to think really hard. There had been talk about taking a Sno-Trac somewhere. Nope, it had gone again.

‘Okay,’ came the voice, ‘I think it’s time to draw back the curtains.’

She placed something damp in my palm and I gently massaged the hard sleep-crust that had sealed my eyes tight shut. I pulled at my top eyelid, the crust broke with an almost-audible snik, and in an instant my vision returned – garish and distorted to begin with, but as my long-dormant cortex kicked into life, the world pulled itself into some semblance of order.

I saw Clytemnestra first, exactly the same as I’d seen her last. But with Clytemnestra came the unwelcome news that I had not returned to Cardiff.

‘The Sarah Siddons,’ I sighed, ‘Sector Twelve.’

‘It grows on you like mildew and needy cousins,’ said a woman who was sitting on a chair next to the bed. ‘We call it “The Twelve” or more usually “The Douzey”. You may get to enjoy it. It’s not likely, but you might.’

She had mousy-brown hair cut short, was dressed in the off-white Winter combat fatigues usually favoured by Consuls, Footmen and the military, and was looking at me with a bemused smile. She was either a very healthy forty or a horribly unhealthy twenty, had faintly Southern features and above her name badge wore a pair of silver storks. She carried a pair of Bambis on her hips and, like Fodder, had a D-ring sewn into her shock-vest.

‘Hello,’ I said, blinking away the gumminess from my vision.