It was so clearly all of a piece, she thought: the loss or substitution of her possessions, the decayed building open to the elements but still usable, the body emerging seamlessly from the wall in very slow motion. On waking she had experienced spatial confusion; remained dissociated well into the morning. Even now, staring out across the titanium-coloured water of Studland Bay, where a small white boat was chewing its way towards the grey horizon, she felt as if she hadn’t quite re-entered herself. She felt as if, down inside, vital parts of her had separated. She felt that something had broken in her personality – had broken, perhaps, some long time before – but that she would never be able to understand what.

Later, in the hotel restaurant, she listened to a mid-level pharma executive telling his friends about a recent trip to Peru. Really, she thought, he was less entertaining them than issuing a set of instructions. He had chosen a KLM flight, he was careful to emphasise, because it allowed him to do some diving en route: they might want to go more directly. When they arrived, there were certain things they should on no account pay for. As for the ruins, well, the visibility had been bad, but ‘as their apology to us’ for not being able to provide the expected view, the natives had cooked him and his girlfriend a special meal. ‘They didn’t charge us for that, obviously.’ Dr Alpert stared at him in open dislike until he noticed her, then forced him to look away. His name, as far as she could tell, was Dominic. At forty, Dominic still sounded like an MBA undergraduate pretending to be his own father. He seemed like a throwback to another age; so did his friends, with their Boden casual wear and pleasant, affirmative manners. So, she thought, did she. She always kept a pair of boots in the Citroën: she would spend a day or two walking the Downs – to Corfe certainly, perhaps even as far the Purbeck Hills and Lulworth Cove. She would walk until she felt better. First she would separate Dominic the pharma from his friends, take him upstairs, and fuck him carefully to a tearful overnight understanding of the life they all led now.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

Tim Etchells contributed to the list of the assistant’s names at the end of Chapter 21. Paragraphs of Chapter 3 appeared in Locus as part of an essay. Thanks go, as ever, to Sarah Cunningham for the use of her beautiful house; and to Cath and her family for their support.

Also by M. John Harrison

Also by M. John Harrison:

The Committed Men

The Centauri Device

The Ice Monkey

Viriconium

Climbers

The Luck in the Head (with Ian Miller)

The Course of the Heart

Signs of Life

Travel Arrangements

Light

Nova Swing