I looked at the girl who was not-Nicole but probably her half-sister. She glared back over the duct tape as if it was my fault. Which technically, I suppose, it probably was.

So it was a hostage swap – which meant if we were clever we might be able to get Nicole back and keep not-Nicole as well.

‘Who are you making the swap with?’ I asked.

We were emerging from the tunnel of trees. To our right the treeless slope of Pokehouse Wood swept up the ridge. The white poles that protected the new saplings thrust up amongst brambles and the stands of foxglove stood grey and trembling in the moonlight. I smelt horse sweat and malevolence – I didn’t think we were alone.

‘The lady who owns Princess Luna . . .’ she said. ‘She came to see me last night. I thought it was a dream. But it couldn’t have been a dream, could it? Because you never remember your dreams, do you?’

Victoria started to drag the girl up the diagonal forestry track – it was slow going, not least because not-Nicole had gone limp in an effort to stop her.

‘This one is your biological daughter,’ I said.

Victoria stopped dead.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Remember when Zoe ran off with the baby?’ I asked. ‘This is where she came.’

‘For god’s sake, why?’

‘For the attention I suppose—’

Victoria cut me off with a disgusted sound.

‘Of course for the attention,’ she snapped. ‘I mean, why did she think it was a good idea to swap Nicky?’

‘That was an accident,’ I said. ‘She didn’t even notice it go down.’

‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘That makes everything okay.’ She shook not-Nicole roughly by the arm. ‘This isn’t mine,’ she said. ‘Blood isn’t everything – I want my daughter back.’

‘So do I,’ I said. ‘And when the other half of this swap-meet turns up, maybe we can do some bargaining.’

‘Um,’ said Dominic urgently. ‘That would be about now.’

I can’t say they materialised out of thin air, but it was as if when I turned my head they arrived in my blind spot, so that when I looked back in that direction they were there. It was creepy, and it was definitely showing off.

And they were real, there in Pokehouse Wood, on the last of the quarter moon. They were flesh and blood. Human shaped but tall and thin, with long delicate faces and hands and black eyes. A woman stood ahead of us dressed in armour made not of metal, but of overlapping stone scales, slate possibly, polished to a bright blue-grey sheen.

Like the scales of a fish, Zoe had said.

Victoria might have called her a lady but I know a Queen when I’m within genuflection distance.