This Client Bubble was where it had all started to go wrong. Thea remembered Rory telling her about the man who’d hallucinated that his teeth were falling out, and she imagined once again his bloody smile, the rattle of enamel in the palm of his hand.

Another boom made the floor undulate again and it was a sound that Thea felt in her body, deep in her rib cage. All three of them cringed, trying to keep moving when all they really wanted to do was hide.

Above them, the suspended walkways groaned.

Thea and Rory glanced at each other.

Then there was the terrible sound of tearing metal: the kind of thick, solid metal that should never tear. A walkway juddered as if a giant was jumping on it, shuddering violently until one of its welded joints split into ragged teeth, one end swinging down and spraying brittle chaos onto the floor below.

‘Run!’

Thea didn’t look up again. She looked ahead, her path to the door suddenly a computer game obstacle course of chair legs and falling danger.

She felt Rosie stumble and though she tried to keep a grip on her she couldn’t stop her from pitching forward, all three of them tumbling into a heap on the floor.

Despite the heat coming from somewhere, Rosie was pale and her lips mauve. A spreading blot of dark red was already beginning to bloom on the bandage covering her eye.

A crisscrossed square the size of a coffee table thudded into the floor about a metre away from Thea where it stuck, point deep. She whimpered and tugged at Rosie who planted her hands flat on the floor and tried to push herself up.

‘Rosie!’ Rory shouted, grabbing her under both armpits and hauling her up.

It was only a computer game, Thea told herself. One where, if a massive chunk of scorching walkway fell on her she would simply blip out on the screen and reappear safe and well back at the start. Dodge that chair leg, keep that grip on Rosie, jump that sizzling lump.

Then there was white. Snow.

Cold air hit her.

They were out and on their way to the green where they’d spent hours doing yoga and eating their lunches. Behind them, the Sleep Centre burned against a dimming, late afternoon sky. Had it really been only that morning that Thea had been dragged away from Ethan’s body? The previously undamaged Staff Bubble was now ablaze, the top curve of the golf ball completely caved in and the rest of it starting to warp and twist like melting marzipan. Thea, Rory and Rosie picked their way through smouldering debris and headed for the copse of trees on the way to the shore.

The three of them swerved a ruined bedstead that hissed in the snow, the heat searing Thea’s back.

‘Please,’ Rosie gasped, her legs crumpling.