This time, I waited for her reply. She did nothing for fifteen minutes, then picked up the pen and rapidly drew another sketch. It was of the beach in the Gower, the wreck of the Argentinian Queen, an orange-and-red parasol of spectacular size and splendour. There was the little girl, too, running after a beach ball, and Birgitta was dressed as she was now, sketching. The pictures of the Buick dream and me and her under the car were all laid upon the sand. As soon as she’d finished she stopped and stared at the floor, exhausted by the activity. I stared for some time at the sketches, and at her.

She was alive in there, dreaming herself in the Gower. Her mind was functioning. I stared into Birgitta’s eyes and tried to catch sight of her trapped inside, but there was nothing. She looked across my shoulder, at the corner of the room, the curtains, back again. She caught my gaze eventually and her bright violet eyes locked hard onto mine for a few seconds.

‘Birgitta?’ I said. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘I love you, Charlie.’

I sighed, trying to figure out what all this meant on a broader scale. The actor I met on the train might have been correct when she said her husband was still alive, and Mr Tiffen’s complex subterfuge to protect his wife would make complete sense if he believed the same. There was Olaf Yawnersson, too, here in the Douzey, who had harboured a couple of nightwalkers for over three years, without evidence of any crime. Perhaps he too saw something that convinced him that his nightwalkers weren’t truly dead. There had been other, anecdotal stories of family members being convinced of their cannibalistically brain-dead loved one’s inner consciousness, but all had been denied by HiberTech and the nightwalkers were then either parted out, retired, used for experiments or redeployed. If what these people believed was true and HiberTech knew about it, then their actions would be nothing short of, well, heinous.

‘Kiki needs the cylinder.’

‘I’m sure she does,’ I said, ‘if I even knew what that meant.’

I fed Birgitta several more Jaffa cakes then sat her in the tub and scrubbed out the grime that had turned her tortoiseshell wintercoat into a matted mess. She sat impassively in the tub as I washed her as you might a dog or an infant, and didn’t murmur as I clipped off her matted head-hair, then rubbed lice oil into her scalp and changed the bandage on her thumb. I then dressed her in clean clothes and tidied up, made sure there was plenty of paper and pens within easy reach and told her I would be back to give her breakfast.