‘Take as many snaps as you want and then get the camera back to me; but wind it on with care; the cold makes the film brittle.’

‘Can the Gronk be photographed?’ I asked, shoving the camera in my bag.

‘I’ve no idea,’ she replied. ‘I’m beginning to think that Wintervolk might be something akin to an escalating night terror that gives physicality to the fears within the mind. It makes it a much harder sell to Treacle. Firstly whether an existential fear has the equivalency of a tangible one, and if it does and can kill you, does that count as proven existence?’

‘Are you sure you’re only sixteen?’ I asked. ‘You seem kind of  . . . smart.’

‘That was really patronising,’ she said, ‘but I forgive you. I have a genetic disorder of the hypothalamus that prevents me hibernating. I sleep about eight hours in the twenty-four all year round. While my peers have been unproductively pumping out the zeds, I’ve been adding to my knowledge base and maturity. My mental age is closer to twenty-two. It doesn’t make me a sage, but I’m certainly not a teenager.’

‘Is this a rare condition? I’ve never heard of it.’

‘It’s rare,’ she sighed, ‘hence the wager.’

‘I know this is none of my business,’ I said, ‘but why agree to wager your firstborn on something as nebulous as the Gronk? It seems almost insanely reckless, if you don’t mind me saying.’

She stared at me for a moment.

‘It’s not for my firstborn,’ she said slowly, ‘it’s for my secondborn.’

‘How does that make it any better?’

‘Here’s how: when I was two my parents sold the option on my firstborn to Partwood Associates to pay off their gambling debts. The option was resold several times before being packaged with other subprime child options and eventually on to Jim Treacle as part of a collateralised child obligation. My genetic sleep disorder means I possess a genome in which HiberTech have a great deal of interest. I’ve chosen not to license my genetic rights, and my unborn should have that right, too. I don’t want them to go to HiberTech to be some kind of – I don’t know – lab rat.’

‘How much is the firstborn child option worth?’

‘Treacle has told HiberTech he wants two million euros at my eighteenth.’

‘You’ll get half. That’s the deal.’

‘It’s not about the money, and they can’t force me to have children – but I think I want to, and if I do, well, I want them to be born unencumbered by legalities.’

‘Okay, but you’ve got a buy-back clause. Legally, there’s always a buy-back clause.’

‘Precisely, but it was pegged at fifty thousand by the courts and I barely have a grand.’