He sat with his head in his hands, his face streaked with tears. I knew he was thinking of Lucky just as much as Nadia, and I remembered my last sight of the hound as its jaws closed around the throat of an attacker. I felt suddenly ashamed of my panic over losing a mere pendant: it was nothing compared to his loss, or the death of Nadia, nothing more than a piece of cheap stamped metal.

I stepped over to Oskar and put my hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry about Lucky.’

‘No!’ He twisted away from me and sprang to his feet, his face twisted in fury. ‘You’re the reason everything went wrong!’

I stared at him, too startled to be angry. ‘Oskar, that doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Take it easy,’ said Casey, who had by this time made his way down from the bridge to join us.

‘No!’ Oskar screamed. ‘Don’t you see? He’s a jinx! A goddam jinx on us all!’

‘Oskar—’ I said, trying to appeal to him.

‘You all know what happened to the first Jerry,’ Oskar yelled at the others. ‘They should never have brought him back, not with all his goddam bad luck. If not for him, Nadia and Lucky would still be alive!’

‘“First” Jerry?’ I asked. ‘What the hell do you mean, the first Jerry?’

‘Don’t you get it?’ Oskar said, his teeth bared in a snarl. ‘You’re not the real Jerry Beche. You’re his replacement, after the first one died.’

Winifred came surging forward, slamming her fist into Oskar’s gut. He collapsed back onto the ground like a deflating balloon.

‘I’m sorry about Nadia,’ said Winifred, her voice curt as she stepped back. ‘Truly sorry. And I’m just as sorry about Lucky, Oskar. Really I am. But you’ve gone too far.’

‘Just explain to me what the hell he’s talking about,’ I demanded, my voice trembling.

Casey sighed and shook his head. ‘You already know there’s nothing unique about any one of us,’ he said, his voice calm and matter-of-fact. ‘There’s an infinity of possible timelines the stages can access, and that means an infinity of variations on each and every one of us. We always knew, in theory at least, that if one of us died, the Authority could just retrieve another version of us from a different, but essentially identical alternate.’

‘No,’ I mumbled, staring at him.

‘You’re a replacement,’ wheezed Oskar from the ground nearby.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Casey, when I looked back at him. Winifred couldn’t meet my eyes. ‘I’m sorry you had to find out this way.’

‘And the first Jerry?’ I asked. My throat felt as if it was closing up, making it hard to get the words out. ‘What happened to him?’