‘Only trying to get in character. I’m meant to be an entitled toff, right? That’s what the card says.’

‘Yeah, it says nothing about being an arsehole.’

Petra made it to the stairs and ascended the curve to the mezzanine that wrapped around the cavernous lobby, feeling people below watching her, and the unnerving creak and sway of the steps under her feet. Despite how real the staircase had looked, once she stepped onto it she soon understood it was a stage set, a temporary scaffolding of steel tubing and wooden slats covered by lush carpet rather than a sweep of stone and marble. Though it seemed safe enough to hold several people’s weight, as she ascended from the level of the brewery’s main hall, Petra couldn’t help feeling the suck of gravity from the deep empty space below her. She felt like she was climbing the frame of a rickety roller coaster, hastily assembled and veneered for a short-term show. That’s what Metamuse was, wasn’t it? An elaborate travelling carnival.

At the top of the stair-frame, she gratefully stepped onto the solid concrete floor of the mezzanine level. The corridor that overlooked the lobby below was blocked to her left and right by magnet-locked glass doors like the ones downstairs. In front of her were three half-glazed office doors done up in brass and green baize like saloon doors in a plush, old-fashioned hotel. The patterned and bevelled glass in the door closest to her was frosted, so she could only see the buttery light and indistinct shadows inside. CLUB ROOM was stencilled on a brass plate beside the door.

Petra turned and looked down towards the people below, leaning the tray on the railing and scanning for Vincent. But the crowd shifted and milled, and with their hats and costumes disguising them it was still no easier to recognise him from up here than down below. But there, off to the side – a man not in costume, but in a honey-brown sheepskin-collared jacket, squatting down and fiddling with something under a white-draped box. Petra craned over the railing as if it would make any difference, and felt the bottle shift dangerously on the tray. She grabbed at it to stop it from sliding and turned and squatted down to set the tray on the floor.

‘What are you doing here?’ someone said behind her.

Petra startled up and spun around. ‘Vincent! Thank God.’