I knew he was worried that the soldiers might come and take the stage away before we had time to get back. ‘I’ll be careful,’ I reassured him. ‘In the meantime, we’re probably going to have to think up some kind of story to explain Randall and Selwyn’s disappearance.’

Yuichi laughed. ‘Hell, yeah. Good point. Now that’s going to take some explaining.’

Chloe took my hand. ‘I’m ready,’ she said. ‘Are you?’

‘I’m ready.’

TWENTY-SEVEN

We materialized in the attic of an empty house, surrounded by furniture hidden beneath dust sheets. I found a screwdriver lying in a corner of the attic and used it to quickly scratch a cross where we had appeared, then checked the time on my watch. We’d have to be back at this exact spot in precisely one hour.

I led Chloe downstairs and out onto a quiet street lined with trees. I could hear the honking of traffic a block away. I felt as if I was in a dream, afraid I might wake up. The only thing anchoring me back to reality was the sensation of Chloe’s hand in mine.

We were in London, in the suburbs, not far from where I had once lived with Alice. We started to walk. I saw vans and buses and people leading ordinary lives, shopping and chattering and doing ordinary things I had forgotten how to do. I drank it all in until I felt numb from sensory overload.

‘This way,’ I said, my voice shaking. I kept having to wipe the tears from my eyes.

‘Where are we going?’ Chloe asked me.

I looked at her, suddenly unable to speak.

‘You think I don’t get it,’ she said, her voice tight with emotion. ‘But I do.’ She reached up to touch my face. ‘So hurry up and get your goddam closure, already.’

I nodded and we walked on. I led her to a sandstone building on a quiet street. I stared at the buzzers next to the front entrance, but I kept my distance rather than read the names there.

‘This was where we lived,’ I said. I didn’t need to tell her I meant myself and Alice. Was there another Alice here, another Jerry? Could this reality be that close to the one I had come from? Or was it just different enough that it lacked a doppelgänger, an alternative version of me?

I turned and looked up and down the busy streets, Chloe watching me intently the whole time. I had seen these same avenues filled with nothing but corpses, the air choked with clouds of buzzing flies. Since then I had literally seen worlds colliding, entire cities of people transformed into mindless, insect-like armies.

I had learned, above all, the enormous fragility of life. I had learned that everything I once believed to be permanent and solid and immutable could change in an instant and be wiped out forever without warning.