‘Whatever,’ Petra said. She’d had enough, she was going home.

Her phone buzzed. She pulled it out of her pocket.

<Vincent: I can, honest>

Petra tried not to react, but Ellis’s hands were on the table, folded calmly where they had been all along. At least, she thought they’d been there all along. It was a voice prompt or a button on the floor. Whatever. Idiot.

Her phone buzzed again.

<Suki: See?>

‘Yeah, very clever. I’m going now.’

An easy enough trick. Probably used the Wi-Fi to hack into her contacts. Bastard.

<Helena: Soon, you will believe>

‘Okay. Now it’s time to stop it. Call me, okay,’ she said to Vincent as she hurried down the passage.

12 He had her mother’s contact details. She shouldn’t have left her Bluetooth unsecured – that’s obviously how he’d performed his parlour trick, hacked into her phone somehow. The moment she stepped out of Vincent’s house, she immediately put the phone into offline flight mode and jammed it deep in her pocket, resolved to change her passwords as soon as she got home.

Petra strode along the street, trying not to seem too hurried to anyone watching – it wasn’t a good idea to advertise panic or rush, anything that may be seen as weakness. Though it was just after seven, it was dark and the houses gave off a forlorn, shuttered feeling. The squally wind kicked leaves and litter around, making the ground feel alive with scuttling things. The road curled in on itself in a way she didn’t recall coming here – the main road should have been straight ahead, but now she was being led into a lonely cul-de-sac. As she tried to backtrack, the abandoned cars littered in the drives and the houses’ empty eyes made her think of a video game she’d seen at an art gallery, where the inhabitants of an English village all disappear into the Rapture.

It was a relief, then, when she stumbled out of the suburb’s ingrown curlicues into the edge of the Midland Oak park. She’d come out a couple of blocks north of where she’d been heading, but at least she knew the direct route home from here. The park was apparently the geographical centre of England, and it seemed appropriate, that far from the lofty ideals of Westminster, that this heart of England should be marked by a pleasant enough patch of grass and reeds, a playground whose high-quality but fading equipment accurately measured the temporal distance from the last socially minded government, an ‘Elderly Crossing’ street sign, a rusted metal bench, an ignored memorial plaque and an overflowing dustbin. The Midland Oak itself had been cut down years ago.

By day she’d see the cheering bloom of the crocuses and daffodils that were already starting to poke their heads out and promise the end of a bland and grey winter. But playgrounds were a different prospect after dark, and Petra stuck to the periphery, and was relieved when she made it across to the broader, busier avenue that led into town. There were living people and moving cars here, and she slotted in alongside them and made her way towards the top of the Parade, where the bus rank and the late-night supermarket were busy with workers going home and diners and drinkers arriving for the evening.