‘Not this time. She was there, in the phone booth, when I walked in. She knows.’

I didn’t know what I was meant to say right then, but it was okay; Birgitta spoke for me. And when she did, it was pretty much as expected.

‘Kiki needs the cylinder.’

Of course. She would say that. I was still filling in the blanks with whatever was to hand. I’d said it before: a dream is just the subconscious mind attempting to form a narrative from a jumble of thoughts, facts and memories.

‘It’s safe,’ I said, meaning the tube I’d just hidden up the chimney, ‘and I’ll come back for it, I promise – and get it to Kiki.’

She raised an eyebrow.

‘I’m not leaving Sector Twelve until you do.’

There was a thump on the door. It was expected, but we jumped, even so.

‘Webster?’ came a voice that could have belonged to either Toccata or Aurora.

‘Who’s there?’ I asked in an innocent, sing-song sort of way.

‘Who do you think?’ came the voice again. ‘The Gronk? Open the sodding door.’

Birgitta and I looked at one another.

‘They’ll search the place,’ I whispered, ‘there must be nothing linking you and me. Here.’

I reached up and plucked a faded photo from where it was hidden beneath the star-shaped clock. It was the Polaroid of us both, a wafer of time from that perfect and now distant moment back on the Rhosilli. I handed it to Birgitta.

‘You kept it?’ she said. ‘Seriously bad move. I’ll destroy it.’

She shoved the Polaroid in her pocket and we stared at one another for a few moments. If the beach had been the high point, this was the low. It would be the last time we/they’d see one another, and I think we/they both knew it. Our final words came easily enough.

‘I love you, Charlie.’

‘I love you, Birgitta.’

We said the words tonelessly, without feeling, just as the nightwalker Birgitta had been saying them to me out in the real world. She hadn’t been saying them in a dull monotone, she was repeating them exactly as she’d last said them. Unhurried, an expression of fact, not an anthem of passion.

And then she was gone, back out of the window and away down the fire escape. The door wobbled as someone outside loosed off a Thumper, and the lock flew off with a loud report and embedded itself in the far wall. A second thump reduced the door to a cloud of wood splinters and—

*   *   *

— I was under the oak tree, sitting on the jumbled heap of scratched boulders, the air heavy with the scent of Summer, the sky an azure blue, the light filtering through the spreading boughs to scatter a dappled light upon the ground.