Thea remembered the picture from the lecture: a speckled bird with a rather incongruous helmet of white and black that made it look as if it was about to go for a bike ride. She imagined it, its little chest heaving as it determinedly flew on, through the night, through sleep.

‘I could go insane.’

‘No. Morpheus could do it with no risk to you. Think of sleep as malleable, like plasticine, and Morpheus gently rolling and massaging it into the smallest ball it could be. It’s still plasticine, hmm? It’s just been squashed together. We would mould your sleep into the smallest ball possible – and you wouldn’t even notice.’

‘Until my brain began to ooze out of my ears.’

Delores sighed and uncrossed her legs. She placed her hands carefully together in a prayer position and tapped the two index fingers repeatedly.

‘You are the perfect candidate for this. In a usual test subject, we would have to try and squeeze seven or eight hours sleep but with you it would only be three. Three! Morpheus could get rid of three hours, I’m sure.’ She paused and stopped tapping her fingers. ‘Of course, all of this would come with a certain … remuneration.’

The pauses for effect were starting to annoy Thea. She wondered if Delores did this in real life, went into a café and said things like: ‘I’ll have the flat white, the bran muffin and a … [cue dramatic pause] … chocolate slice.’ Though, of course, she would never go into cafés. Coffee would magically appear for a woman like her.

‘How much money?’

‘Twenty thousand.’

Thea narrowed her eyes. She was hoping that, by narrowing them, Delores wouldn’t see her utter shock. Twenty thousand pounds! The warning light flashed around in her mind, illuminating corners where things like consequences lurked, but Thea was already too dazzled by that number.

Twenty thousand pounds!

Delores put her chin on the tips of her fingers.

Getting up, Thea wandered over to the window. Below was the village green with the forest looming behind, reeds rustling around the pond and her ‘family’ out doing star jumps for their afternoon exercise session. Rosie was at the front, star-jumping like a demented jack-in-the-box, going twice the speed of everyone else and still managing to hold a conversation with Ethan. Not a conversation, Thea noted: a monologue. Ethan was his usual grim self, looking stern even when jumping up and down.

It was ridiculous. She had barely coped on one hour’s sleep, but Delores thought Morpheus could successfully get rid of even that? It wouldn’t work. And would probably nearly kill her in the process.