‘How’s it going, Wonk?’ came a voice in my ear so suddenly I jumped. It was Sister Zygotia, a particular favourite of mine, despite – or perhaps because of – her eccentricity. She had a fondness for peanut butter and anchovies, used to nail her bedroom door shut during the Winter ‘to guard against prowling Wintervolk’, then insist that puddings at St Granata’s be randomly laced with curry powder to ‘better prepare us for life’s inevitable disappointments’.

‘So-so,’ I said. ‘The budget for next year is a little tight but we should be all right, so long as the offset payments aren’t reduced and we eat meat only once a week.’

‘Good, good,’ she said in a distracted fashion, then put her hand on my shoulder and steered me to a corner of the hall.

‘Look, I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news and all,’ she said, ‘but I am. You should know that Mother Fallopia got wind of your application to the Prudential and, well, she had words with their induction officer. Your application was  . . . rescinded.’

I had to admit I wasn’t surprised, but it didn’t feel good. Frustration has a smell of its own, like hot toffee mixed with sun-dried mud. I looked at Sister Zygotia, who said she was sorry, and I told her it was fine, really, and I was then relieved to be called away in order to help deal with Sister Contractia, who was taking her door bouncer duties a little more enthusiastically than anyone thought necessary. Sister Contractia liked a good brawl so it took ten minutes to calm her down, sweep up the broken teeth, placate the six people she’d just taken on and clean out the cut above her eye. When I got back, Lucy Knapp was telling everyone about her first overwintering gig at HiberTech, and how she’d actually seen a Winter solstice. She showed us the single brass star pinned to her blouse to prove it.

‘Did you get sleep-deprivation narcosis?’ I asked, parking my frustration in the back of my mind, where it sat with good and ancient company.

‘Once you’ve shifted your sleep cycle to the late Summer it isn’t so bad,’ said Lucy, ‘but the first season up can be cruel. The only upside was that while you’re freezing to death, getting eaten or being press-ganged into domestic service, you could be hallucinating that you were on the Gower Peninsula, sipping mock-banana daiquiris while watching the sun go down from the Worm’s Head Bar & Grill.’