No one was coming. At least there was that. But I couldn’t shift. I couldn’t heave myself up. I kept trying. Before me on the floor were all the birth objects I’d picked that had all tumbled out of my pockets when I landed. Where was I? What room was this? Some sort of store room I thought at first. I could see a door and there were five different locks to it. Somewhere important then. All sorts of things here. Shelves full of different objects, but no logic to them, bits of ribbon, and yet silver things, a catapult, some stamps in a jar, a mouth organ, buttons, toy soldiers, pipes, but also cigarette cases, but then a wooden sword, a mousetrap, flypapers, ink bottles. Whose stuff was all this?

I heard movement, someone coming. I tried to pull myself free. Couldn’t. Couldn’t do it. There was someone there then. Someone looking over me.

It was a man, youngish, maybe eighteen. Dressed in black, grim-looking. His skin very yellow, a sour face. Didn’t like the look of him much. He had a slight moustache, a smudge of one, spots on his forehead. And then I saw around his ankle a metal cuff, and from it a length of chain. Some young man on a chain. Who chained him up?

‘Sir! Oh, sir,’ he called to his master, ‘you may as well know it. There’s something new in here. Something quite new.’

A voice in a room further back replied, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Toastrack, what is it now? I’ll beat you!’

‘And I’ll kick you back, you turnip.’

‘What was that?’

‘Words, I should think, so many words from my own hole.’

‘What did you say, Toastrack?’

‘Stuff, wasn’t it? Wouldn’t you like to know.’

‘You said you’d mind your manners.’

‘And you said you’d cut me free, but you didn’t, you chained me up. We’re all liars. Born to lie I shouldn’t wonder. Cretin. Come on in then, Sir Mucus, and have a gander at this. Look what the storm dragged in.’

‘I am trying to be nice to you, Toastrack.’

‘Don’t much see the point in that myself. Why bother?’

‘We must attempt to be civilised, to make the most of the situation.’

‘I hate you. You hate me. That’s about the picture of it.’

‘No, Toastrack, I don’t. I’m fond of you. You mean much to me.’

‘Well, I loathe you, sir!’

‘I will beat you, you know.’

‘No, no you shan’t. I’ll smack you back, just like I did last time.’

‘I broke your nose.’

‘I gave you a headache that lasted a month. Next, I’ll crack your skull.’

‘Please, please, can we try to be pleasant?’

‘You started it.’

‘Then I apologise.’

‘Big of you.’