I walked into the bathroom and looked around but there was nothing here, either, just a single toilet roll and two empty coffee mugs. I was just about to leave when something caught my eye. Folded on the edge of the sink was a face flannel. I pressed a finger against the material, and instead of being hard and dry as I expected, it was soft, yielding and damp. The room had been visited recently.

The strip-lights in the bathroom flickered and the Charles I’d been in the dream remembered something new: I was in a lab somewhere, the smell of ozone in the air, blue light flickering from cathode tubes, myriads of flickering lights, the hum of machinery. To my left was a large inverted copper cone, similar to the one that I’d seen through the window of the lab at HiberTech, when Goodnight warned me about curiosity and what it did to the cat. I felt the sharp tip of the cone against my temple, a searing pain, and then the image was gone and I was once more alone in the bathroom.

I sighed, then washed my face in the basin using the flannel, and once I had, a thought struck me: just what, precisely, had Aurora been doing in the Siddons this morning? I didn’t suppose it was solely to see me – and it also occurred to me that when we led the three nightwalkers out of the basement the previous morning there had been fresh snow on Aurora’s command car, yet the morning had been clear and bright. She’d been at the Siddons at least part of the night on both occasions. And since she didn’t sleep, she must have been here on business. HiberTech business.

Aurora was right: life in Sector Twelve is rarely what it seems.

A remote farm in Lincolnshire

‘ . . . Despite a conducive sleep environment, inadvertent Risers below a certain Body Mass Index would often not go back to sleep, which caused a headache for porters and placed an increased burden on pantry. There were no fines, but the negative feedback in SleepAdvisor could impact upon the following year’s popularity – and rates. A visit by a drowsy could be an effective and economic alternative  . . . ’

– Handbook of Winterology, 4th edition, Hodder & Stoughton

It was just getting light when I went downstairs. Reception was empty, and a glance at the lobby thermometer revealed that the building was three and a half degrees up on the previous evening. It was usual to add heat prior to a cold snap, but adding too much too early could trigger an awakening, a false dawn. Heat management was considered more an art than a science. I hoped Lloyd knew what he was doing.

I walked into the dining room. Of the thirty or so tables, only four had been laid, each in a separate corner of the room.