‘So,’ said the actor, nodding towards what had once been Mrs Tiffen, ‘harboured?’

‘By her husband for five years.’

Most people to whom I mentioned this displayed a sense of disgust; not the actor.

‘He must have loved her.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘he gave everything he had to protect her.’

While Mr Tiffen had regarded his wife as someone with profound neurological issues, we saw her as little more than another casualty of the Winter. The bouzouki playing was merely a quirk, a vestigial memory from a mind that once crackled with personality and creative energy. Almost all of her was gone; only the skill remained.

We pulled into Abercynon station with a hiss. The passengers moved about the platform with commendable silence, easily explained: those now heading for the grateful joy of slumber were too fatigued to celebrate, and those planning to overwinter had only the anxieties of a lonely sixteen weeks to dominate their thoughts. Little was said as the passengers embarked and disembarked, and even the signalman’s clicker seemed to have lost its usual sharpness.

‘The courts are usually lenient if there’s a family component,’ said the actor in a quiet voice. ‘Mind you, harbouring is harbouring.’

‘There’ll be no trial,’ I said. ‘Her husband’s dead – and with honour.’

‘The best sort in my view,’ said the woman thoughtfully. ‘I hope for the same myself. What about you? Many Winters under your belt?’

‘This is my first.’

She looked at me with such a sense of shocked surprise that I felt quite unnerved.

‘First Winter?’ she echoed incredulously. ‘And they’ve sent you on nightwalker delivery duty to Sector Twelve?’

‘I’m not exactly alone,’ I said, ‘there’s—’

‘—first Winters should always be spent indoors, taking notes and acclimatising,’ she said, ignoring me. ‘I’ve lost far too many newbies to be anything but sure of that. What did they do? Threaten to thump you?’

‘No.’

They didn’t need to. I’d volunteered, quite happily, eight weeks before, during Fat Thursday celebrations.

Fat Thursday

‘ . . . The length of time humans have hibernated has shifted subtly, mostly due to climatic conditions and advances in agriculture. ‘Standard Winter’ was adopted in 1775 and fixed to eight weeks either side of Winter solstice. From Slumberdown to Springrise, 99.99% of the population submit to the dark abyss of sleep  . . . ’

– The Hiberculture of Man, by Morris Desmond

Fat Thursday had been long established as the first day of serious gorging, the time to indulge in the latest faddy get-fat-quick diets and to take a vow of abstinence from the mass-stealing sin of exercise. Yesterday you could run for a bus and no one would turn a hair, tomorrow it would be frowned upon as almost criminally irresponsible. For the two months until Slumberdown, every calorie was sacred; a fight to keep every ounce. Spring only ever welcomed the mass-diligent.

Skinny Pete went to sleep, underfed and bony

Skinny Pete went to sleep, and died a death so lonely