They all looked at me as if it was my decision. I looked at Chloe, who hadn’t replied, and thought about how badly I’d wanted to find somewhere like home not so very long ago. But now I had the chance, I found myself far from sure I wanted to take it.

‘I guess we go, then.’

Government House had a few bullet holes studded around its entrance that hadn’t been there before. Soldiers stood guard outside the building for the first time since my retrieval. They eyed us watchfully as we commandeered a couple of jeeps from the pool, but made no move to stop us, and soon we were driving back up along the coast road.

The beached trawler was just as we’d left it. We went inside and started the power-up sequence while I pulled out the envelope and read the appropriate coordinates out to Randall. I watched as he programmed them into the laptop himself.

Randall looked around us all, and I could see how terrified he was, and how determined. ‘Well, here goes nothing,’ he said, stepping inside the ring on its rickety wood and canvas support. I saw the perspiration on his skin, his fear written in the lines on his face. ‘I’ll take a look around, see what I can see and report back. I won’t be long.’

We had set the stage to automatically bring him back after five minutes, since there was no way of knowing if there was a transfer stage on the other side. As long as he made sure to stand exactly where he’d been when he arrived, he’d be able to return. If we tried to maintain the connection any longer than that, the power drain would quickly become exponential.

The air shimmered, and when it faded, Randall was gone. I wondered what he was seeing, or if we had just sent him to an unimaginable death. Yuichi hobbled back outside on his crutches to smoke; Winifred went with him. I sat down on the sand with my back against the rusting hull and was still staring towards the stage when Randall reappeared right on time five minutes later. Despite my certainty that everything would be all right, I still felt a powerful rush of relief.

It hit me that all through the hunt for Casey, I had not thought about Alice once.

Winifred crowded in through the rent in the hull with Yuichi. ‘What did you see?’ she asked Randall excitedly.

‘I was in an old abandoned hotel,’ he said, grinning more broadly and looking more happy than I had ever seen him. ‘I had just enough time to stick my head outside and take a look, and . . .’ he trailed off, shaking his head.

‘C’mon,’ urged Yuichi. His cigarette, forgotten, burned its way down towards his knuckles.