I dropped into a seat and listened as she continued. ‘I knew he still liked me even after that,’ she said. ‘He’d drop little hints from time to time that he knew something I didn’t, but I never paid attention to any of it. Then I found him in here, drinking alone, as he was starting to do more and more. He started telling me this long, rambling story about how he’d discovered everything we’d been told about retirement wasn’t true.’

Randall stared at her, his eyes practically bugging out of his head. ‘Why didn’t you tell us!’

‘Why? Don’t you think the life we have here is infinitely better than what we had before our retrieval?’ She looked around, her arms folded like a teacher confronting an unruly classroom. ‘You’re all so focused on going home. Well, I’ve got news for you: even if you could, you probably wouldn’t like it as much as you think you would. You’ve all changed too much to ever go back.’

Her words made me think of another conversation I’d had, when I’d wondered if it was still possible to find some other version of Alice, somewhere out there in the multiverse. Randall, however, was having none of it. ‘Oh come on!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s ridiculous!’

‘Is it?’ She turned to him. ‘Think of all those stories of traumatized soldiers coming back home after years away fighting in far-off lands, trying to fit into their old lives and surrounded by people with no idea of what they’ve been through. People like that always either wound up dead, in jail or re-enlisting.’ She arched an eyebrow, fixing Randall firmly with her gaze. ‘Every one of us lived through the end of a world, and that puts us in the same boat. Whoever you were before that is gone. Trying to slip back into your old lives would be like trying to wear a dead man’s shoes. Sooner or later, you’d go crazy or run away or worse. Whether you like it or not, Randall, we just don’t belong in such places any more.’

Altogether, this was by far the longest speech I had ever heard Winifred utter. ‘So where do we belong?’ I asked, curious for her answer.

‘Why, right here, of course.’ She looked around again, and seemed to relent a little. ‘Look, I knew how upset you’d all get if I’d told you any of this, plus I thought it unlikely you’d ever believe me anyway, so I chose not to. We’ve already got better lives than we could possibly hope for just by being here. Telling you what Wallace told me would have been . . . cruel, I think. And unnecessary, to boot.’

‘Would you go home, if you could?’ I asked her.

‘I thought you understood,’ she said, looking puzzled. ‘I already am.’