Meanwhile, her body was strained into such a curve that only the upper left side of her ribcage touched the floor. Her right leg was raised about thirty degrees to the horizontal, the other bent slightly back from the knee. Her feet were bare. Her arms, outstretched either side of her head, curved towards the ceiling; her hands were open, palm out, fingers clutching then relaxing in slow motion. From this awkward, uncomfortable viewpoint she was forced to stare out into a dazzling nave of light, across a shiny black surface full of reflections. She was toppling into that space and at the same time through it. Everything smelled of electricity. People were pushing strange equipment around. Or they came up close and began talking about her as if she wasn’t there. ‘We’re catching it in the Planck time,’ they told one another. ‘You can’t see it for longer because it’s already in its own future, already something different.’ They said: ‘Where does the cat fit in?’

Laughter. Then:

‘The people in Xenobiology are already calling her Pearl.’

It was just like being in the bloody hospital. She hated them, and whatever ghastly world they belonged to. But worse: over a period of time that might have been seconds or years, she became aware that there was someone else trapped in there with her. Sometimes Anna could feel her bones grate together, there was so little room for them both. It wasn’t James the cat, though she knew he was inside her too, prowling about and layering his own motives over hers. A growing sense of tension and imprisonment pushed everything else out of her mind, and her attempts to communicate with her earlier self ceased. She could hear a voice, distant-sounding but quite clearly inside her own head. It raged and complained. Whoever it was – whatever it was – they fell and fell together. They were aware of one another. Everything became a dull struggle over the body, or what they thought of as the body . . .

. . . I would want to have love if I knew what that was. You can get a patch for it, it’s more like an app. It’s a mood, very economical, very full of emotion, the love patch down at Uncle Zip for Saturday night. Mary Rose, Moroccan Rose, Mexicali Rose, Rose of Tralee, Rrose Selavi. Immordino, Gianetta, Ona Lukoszaite. There’s evidence, Dr Alpert said, of a couple of tiny strokes, nothing to worry about. Did I lose my memory so I could lose my memories? Put that way it seems not just possible but ordinary . . .