The thawed and refrozen area where Moody had met his end was now covered by a light smattering of snow, and already someone had partially mended the crack on the window of Mrs Nesbit’s with some silicon filler. I hurried on past, my time in Sector Twelve mercifully almost at an end. The Winter was wilder than I’d thought, and everything I had learned from the Consuls in Cardiff and the Academy had been pretty much overturned. There were the rules we were taught, and there were the rules we did our job by. The two were related, but as distant cousins rather than siblings. I needed to be back as a Novice, in Cardiff, doing laundry and photocopying. Away from HiberTech, RealSleep, Sector Twelve, Aurora, night-terrors and dreamers.

But that wasn’t going to happen. There was another shock in store when I reached the station. The platform was empty. The Cardiff train had gone.

Marooned

‘ . . . The Campaign for Real Sleep or “RealSleep” were a bunch of dangerous disruptionists, hell bent on upsetting the delicate balance of the nation’s hibernatory habits – or an unjustly-banned hibernatory rights group. It depends on your point of view. Not that it mattered. Support of a financial, material or spiritual nature was punishable by life imprisonment  . . . ’

– To Die, Perchance to Sleep? – the Rise and Fall of RealSleep, by Sophie Trotter

I tried to dispel my panic with denial.

‘The Merthyr train,’ I said to the stationmaster when I found her in a tiny office that smelled of coal-smoke, old socks and baking, ‘just gone for coal and water or something, yes?’

She looked at me, then at an oversized pocket watch she carried in her undersized pocket.

‘I let it go fifteen minutes early,’ she said in a curt manner. ‘They were in a hurry to get back through the Torpantu.’

‘You said I had two hours.’

‘I misspoke. But you can always take the next train. It’s at Springrise plus two, 11.31, all stops to Merthyr, light refreshments available, off peak, Super Saver not valid – but no bicycles.’

‘I can’t wait sixteen weeks. I need to be back home now.’

‘Perhaps you should have thought of that before you delayed the train in Cardiff. There’s a moral in this story, my friend. Piss around with our timetables, and we’ll piss around with yours. Enjoy your stay in the Douzey. You’ll like it here. No wait, hang on, my mistake – you won’t. If luckless circumstance, Villains, Toccata, cold or Wintervolk don’t get you, the poor food almost certainly will.’

And she smiled.