‘If I didn’t take the deal when offered by Goodnight, what makes you think I’ll take it with you? Besides, I don’t know about any cylinder.’

There was a sudden gust of cold wind, and a flurry of snowflakes drifted around the beach. The photographer had just arrived and was offering his services to Birgitta and Charles, just as before.

‘You see?’ said Aurora. ‘A subconscious clue. You will tell me. It’s hard not to think about stuff when asked. Out in the cold somewhere?’

‘I don’t know.’

Aurora took a step closer, and all of a sudden she was three times larger. I felt my chest tighten and for a fleeting instant I thought I would wake and be safely away from this, but Aurora took my ear between finger and thumb and squeezed so tightly I yelped.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘before I really get to work on you, last chance: tell me where the cylinder is.’

She drew closer and her teeth seemed to sharpen into points. I was suddenly reminded of Sister Contractia, who filed her teeth for fun until Mother Fallopia told her not to.

Despite the pain, I closed my eyes, concentrated, and shifted away from Aurora, away from the beach, away from the dream. I could feel myself momentarily aware of the apartment at HiberTech with two technicians looming over me, and then I was standing next to the blue Buick under the azure sky, the picnic laid out beside me, the oak tree around which the stones were piled. And sitting on top of them, Don Hector. Old, grizzled, tired. There were no hands around except his and mine, nor was there any Aurora. She’d have to find me.

The old man caught my eye and I walked over, the sun feeling warm against my skin. He was eating a sandwich, and a glass of freshly poured Champagne stood on a nearby boulder, the fizz rising in the liquid. The detail was all there. Every texture, every smell, every sound.

‘Your dream or mine?’ he asked, waving a hand about him.

‘Yours,’ I said, ‘with maybe a hint of mine.’

He smiled and patted the stones he was seated upon.

‘Do you know why these boulders are heaped around the tree?’

‘I’ve been wondering that for a while.’

‘Farmers ploughing their fields,’ he replied. ‘Whenever they snagged a boulder it was pulled up and discarded. Usually deposited to the side of the field, but if there was a tree, that would become the place. The heap of stones represents toil; a lichen-encrusted palimpsest of an agricultural way of life before mechanisation.’

‘I have the cylinder,’ I said, ‘but I need to know what to do with it.’

‘You have to get it to Kiki.’

‘I am Kiki.’

‘Then my mission is complete, my work is done.’

‘Yes, but what do I do now?’ I asked, ‘very little is clear to me right now.’