Ellis clinked two blocks into the glass and stepped across to hand it to Petra without offering anything to Olivia. Her body was cooperating by now, and she took the glass and had a deep swallow. She didn’t usually like whisky but this was real – it smelled heady and it burned as it went down, and along with the cold condensation on the side of the glass beading and wetting her fingers, it proved to Petra that this was still real life. Gradually, she remembered what had happened outside this room, before she’d passed out.

As soon as she could trust her limbs to work to the same end, she straightened and stood. ‘Where is Vincent?’ she asked

‘Vincent is with Rebecca,’ Olivia said. Now, behind that facade of a body, Petra could discern the lifetimes exposed by this woman’s nuanced voice and the weight between her words and the dark aura that radiated from her.

‘Beccie is dead,’ Petra said.

Olivia’s smile dripped with cynicism. ‘Yes. And what of it?’

‘If you look through there, you’ll see,’ Ellis said, nonchalantly pointing his own glass at the venetian blind behind Petra, as he lit another cigarette with a cheap plastic lighter whose uric green clashed with the carefully curated stage set.

Petra put her drink down on the carpet by the leg of the couch and went around to the window. She pulled the string and raised the blind, revealing an expanse of plain brickwork that looked like an unadorned part of the brewery wall.

‘What am I supposed to see?’ She turned around to Ellis, but he was gone, Olivia was gone; the room was gone. Instead, Petra was standing in a low, narrow service tunnel that smelled of wet concrete and gently burning electrical wire. Behind her, bundles of cabling emitted a low buzz like a smothering hornet’s nest, and to each side the dimly lit passage receded into darkness. In front of her, though, a window set into the tunnel’s wall looked into a gold-lit cave whose walls were hung with racks with gilded lyres and medieval cornets, drums, cymbals and sticks festooned with small bells.

In the centre of the packed-earth floor stood Vincent and Beccie, talking. Vincent’s voice was muffled by the window but it was clear that he was having a one-sided conversation. While Vincent pleaded and coaxed, Beccie stood impassively, turning her face occasionally, nodding, touching her cheek. When Vincent stepped forward, she stepped back and wouldn’t allow him to touch her. It was a clever effect, yes, maybe performed live from another room, or perhaps with smart AI to react realistically to Vincent’s motion, but it was obviously a hologram or a projection. Just as in the pictures Vincent had taken at Cabinet, Beccie was blurred around the edges as if they’d developed this hologram from a low-resolution original.