Amongst the trees, feeling safer even though they probably weren’t, they both took a second or so to look back at the Sleep Centre. Framed by arching branches, it took on a sci-fi gothic all of its own. It was a smoking husk, the two huge spheres now half destroyed, charred streaks running down their curves, their insides spilled out onto the snow where the explosions had thrown them. Thea had been here a few weeks ago. She had taken this path with Harriet, but it had been night then and she had been full of … trepidation, yes, but also excitement. Because this place had held a promise for her then, a nebulous hard-to-believe promise that she could be fixed, that she could live the kind of life she imagined others lived: bright-eyed and energetic.

‘I’ve been hallucinating,’ she confessed.

Rory turned to her.

‘Twice, I think. I refused Delores’s trial but … well, there was at least a week wearing those bloody discs where I was waiting for Rosie to be well enough to move … anything could have been tested on me in that time and I think, maybe, it was …’

No whirring black objects appeared in the sky, but she gazed at it anyway because it was easier than looking at Rory.

‘I didn’t sleep. And I felt fine.’ She paused and chewed on her lip. ‘And we know what happens after the hallucinating …’

Blank stare. Drool.

Rory took a moment before he said anything. ‘You probably need to just get some sleep.’

And it was exactly what she’d wanted him to say. Lie, if he had to. Each time she blinked she was afraid that the blink would go on for far too long.

They trudged through the wood towards the beach, but at least they trudged together. Thea liked the way the trees closed in around them, not just because their branches blocked out much of the sky, and what could be flying in it, but because they felt friendly. Soft peeling bark and cushiony velour moss – not hard-edged concrete, glass that shattered too easily and a glossy plastic sheen that could close over a person’s face.

Their steps were muffled by the snow.

They would make it, Thea thought again, even though their steps were leaving a clear and easily trackable print right from the door of the gift shop.

She was aware she should say something to Rory. He was walking beside her and hadn’t said much since the gift shop where they had sat side by side, shell-shocked.

‘All I could think about was you.’