He directed me to the second on the left down the corridor, and I thanked him and walked out of the room. I didn’t want the loo; I wanted a closer look at our driver, who was still staring ahead blankly. I was right; it was Charles Webster. The picture on the missing person’s flyer matched: he had a mole beneath his right eye.

‘Hello, Charles,’ I said. There was no reaction. I reminded myself that the connection between him and Birgitta was weak. All I had was Birgitta’s admission – before she nightwalked – that her husband vanished. That was it. No name, no idea where he vanished to or even when. I had no confirmation they were the same person, aside from the dream, which was no confirmation at all.

‘Birgitta says “hi”,’ I said, but there was no reaction. I tried again: ‘There will always be the—’

‘—Gower,’ said Webster, or, at least, something that I thought sounded like ‘Gower’. On reflection, it might have just been a mumble.

I heard voices from down the corridor and looked up as The Notable Goodnight attended by a gaggle of assistants walked around the corner, Lucy amongst them. I briefly heard something about deep memory reacquisition before they saw me and all stopped talking.

‘Well,’ said The Notable Goodnight, staring at me with an imperious eye, ‘Charlie Worthing. What are you doing here?’

‘Consul business, ma’am.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Yes; to do with extra food for the winsomniacs. We have fifty-four of them.’

‘Have you tried starvation? Clears them out in a jiffy, I’m told.’

Lucy whispered something in her ear.

‘I’ve been instructed to tell you that was a joke. Dark, but a joke. Funny, yes?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘very.’

She grunted and they all moved on except for Lucy.

‘Good to see you, Charlie,’ she said as we tapped fists. ‘Someone said you overslept. Is that true?’

I rolled up my sleeve and showed her my forearm, which more closely resembled a stick draped with furry skin.

‘Wow,’ she said, ‘you lost all that in only four weeks?’

‘Dreams,’ I said, ‘and they’re kind of still with me.’

I told her about the retrospective nature of my dreams and she nodded knowingly.

‘Narcosis can do weird things to the mind,’ she said. ‘How are you getting along with the Consuls?’

‘Sort of okay.’

‘I shouldn’t really tell you this, but be extremely wary of Toccata. She’s allowing her hatred of Aurora to cloud her judgement and invents all manner of conspiracies. HiberTech has been wanting to get rid of her for years, but it’s kind of complicated when Aurora is so valuable. Toccata can be volatile, and we don’t want any wrinkles when we roll out Project Lazarus. I can’t say much, but there’s talk of Morphenox-B being available to everyone.’

‘That’s good,’ I said.