‘Paladin, I have to get word to her. Can you help with that?’

‘I could. But there is a complication. You will forgive me for eavesdropping on a private matter, but—’ Paladin was silent for a moment. ‘You must take me apart again.’

‘Why?’

‘Because someone is coming. The house has a caller.’

Doctor Morcenx came in and closed the door behind him. The room was still grey with predawn light and under my hastily arranged sheets I watched him through the narrowest slits of my eyes. I pretended to have been roused.

‘Doctor . . .’ I mumbled out. ‘I was asleep.’

‘That’s very good, Arafura.’ He settled his bag down at the foot of my bed and parked himself halfway up it, his back to me as he opened the bag and delved into its contents. Almost without looking he settled one clammy palm onto my wrist, where it jutted out of the sheets. ‘You must have been having quite a stimulating dream, judging by your pulse rate.’

‘I was in space,’ I said. ‘Reliving it all.’

‘It does you no good to dwell on the past, Arafura. The sooner you accept that, the better it will be for you.’ He nodded the back of his head at the picture of my sister, compressing and relaxing the roll of fat at the base of his skull. ‘Think of your father, too. None of this has been easy for him, in his present condition. You would be doing him a great kindness if you discarded your selfish adherence to one narrative and instead accepted the other, more preferable version of events.’

‘If we’re going that far, why don’t we all pretend Adrana never existed in the first place?’

‘Your sister died. We are all in agreement about that. The manner of her dying is merely a detail.’ He produced a dark green vial from the bag. ‘We shall see, shan’t we?’

‘See what?’ I asked.

He turned his face to smile down at me. ‘Scholars and musicians take this formulation during periods of intense study. It promotes the consolidation of new memories, accelerating the act of learning. In the process, of course, it’s necessary that redundant memories be allowed to weaken, to wither.’ He prepared a syringe and moved to inject me, laying a hand on my forearm as he held the syringe upright and squirted a few drips from the end of the needle.

I struggled, but Morcenx was too strong. He pushed the needle into me, and with it the green drug.

‘There,’ he said, withdrawing the syringe. ‘That wasn’t too bad, was it?’

I lay still. All I felt was a cold numbness, as if I had been slapped hard.

‘Why are you doing this?’

He looked at me with surprise on his face. ‘Doing what, my dear?’