‘She’s butterin’ you up,’ Vidin Quindar said. ‘I know the girlie, and she’s layin’ it on thick. Space is exactly where she wants to be. You’ve got a lick of sense, you’ll put a lock on her door and chain her to a bed for the next three months.’

‘How can you say that?’ I asked, gasping at the effrontery. ‘After all I’ve been through. You’re making me feel quite dizzy, Mr Quindar. I think I’m going to faint.’

‘It’s the glowy,’ the first representative confided to my father. ‘It’s taken quite a hold. Perhaps we ought to draw on the doctor’s services, for her rest and well-being?’

‘I suppose,’ Father said.

The first representative walked to the back of the room and knocked gently on one of the wooden panels. It opened, revealing itself as a cleverly concealed little door with no handle on this side. A moon-faced pepperpot of a man stooped under the already low threshold, carrying a small black bag.

‘Doctor Morcenx,’ said Father. ‘I’d hoped not to trouble you, but I’m afraid we may have need of you after all.’

‘Not at all, Mister Ness,’ Morcenx answered, kneeling down to creak open his bag. ‘It’s for the best, after all. What this girl needs now is recuperation, and lots of it. A little rest, and she’ll be right as rain. And we’ll soon have that bothersome parasite flushed out of her.’ The doctor had a little stoppered vial in his pudgy hand. He opened the vial and squirted its contents into a white pad, like a miniature pillow.

I thought of fighting him, and it was hard not to, especially as I’d added an extra grudge to his account for the bracelet that was still weighing down my arm. But I wanted to keep up the act that I was a good girl glad to be home, and that there wasn’t a single bad or dangerous thought between my ears. The doctor smiled disarmingly as he came near. Then it was on me, and he kept the pad pressed down gently but firmly, covering my nose and mouth, all the while his large, kind eyes looked at me from that moon-face, as if everything was going to be all right from now on. I didn’t want to breathe, but in the end it was all I could do.

And I passed into unconsciousness.

They had put a picture of Adrana up on the shelf at the foot of my bed, so that she’d be the first thing I saw when I woke up. I recognised the dress she wore, the way she’d had her hair done. Her hair always looked nicer than mine, even when we’d been in space.