‘You tried to save her, but you were too late,’ said Sykes.

‘She was right here,’ I said numbly.

And yet I had written those words. I remembered, then, for the first time in a long time, the journey I had worked so hard to suppress: travelling across a blighted landscape filled with the bodies of the dead, the air thick and rancid with their stink, hunted by dogs already turned feral. I remembered . . .

I don’t remember exactly what I said next, or what I did. All I really remember is Crew Cut wrestling me back down onto the bed, and holding me there while Sykes hurriedly stuck something in my arm. They said much later that I hit Sykes, but I don’t remember that bit. Mostly, I remembered all the things I had worked so hard never to have to remember again.

Alice was sitting on the end of my bed, still wearing that same ratty green scarf she’d picked up in Toulouse during our honeymoon.

‘I miss you,’ I said, my throat so thick with emotion I could barely get the words out.

‘I know you do, sweetheart,’ she said, and glanced towards the door. ‘You stay here while I get myself a coffee, okay?’

‘Wait,’ I said, as she got up and pulled the door open. ‘Don’t go.’

She turned and smiled, hair swinging around her shoulders. ‘Look at you,’ she said, nodding at my wrist, still cuffed to the bed. ‘You never miss a chance to do your party trick, do you?’

I frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Take care, honey,’ she said, pulling the door open and slipping out of sight.

That was the last time I ever saw her. I suppose that’s the moment I started to regain my sanity. But at that moment all I could really think was, Party trick? What party trick?

Then I woke up for real, and realized what she meant. It had been such a very long time ago, it was hardly surprising I had forgotten.

Floyd had taught me the party trick back when we had been students together, and long before he recruited me to help him try and save the world. His love for cheap magic stunts knew no bounds, especially if any pretty girls were in the vicinity. One time at a party he got a girl to cuff his hands behind his back, before we all participated in locking him in the bathroom. We stood outside, beers in hand and counting down from sixty en masse, barely reaching twenty before he came bursting out of the door, unshackled arms raised in triumph. The last I saw of him that night, was as he disappeared into his room with the girl who’d cuffed him, and a stolen bottle of wine.