‘Oh, she’s not so bad.’ Rosie stopped as if to admire the view stretching out below them, but really trying to catch her breath. ‘Fierce shoes! Gave me a lipstick a few days ago, just cos I complimented her on the colour. Bet she’s got a great Insta page.’

‘It’s a science experiment, that’s all,’ Thea pondered. ‘It’s what scientists do, isn’t it? Try to push things a bit further?’

‘Yeah!’ Rosie grinned. ‘Like Frankenstein, right? Make a new human being.’

Thea stopped and there was a pause as Rosie’s brain caught up with what she’d just said, ‘’Cept of course it was a monster, wasn’t it? Not that you’ll—’ Rosie’s eyes went wide in dismay, slow-loris-style.

‘Turn into a monster?’

‘You might.’ Ethan laughed, just briefly, but it was an actual laugh. He looked as surprised at it as they did.

‘Why do they want to do it, though?’ Rosie frowned. ‘I thought they were helping us to get more sleep, not less. I don’t understand.’

Ethan called over his shoulder as he marched on ahead of them, ‘Bet the MOD have been trying to do something like this for years. A soldier who doesn’t sleep? An army that doesn’t sleep?’

‘Or a doctor,’ Thea added, both women walking quicker to keep up with him. ‘Think of all the lives that could be saved if there were no sleep-deprived doctors.’

‘Or the lives that could be taken by those wide-awake soldiers.’

Rosie’s eyes became bigger still. ‘What? People who never sleep? But that’s just … unnatural.’

The monastery was close now, and though Thea had been thinking of sleepless soldiers and twenty thousand pounds, she had also been thinking of this place. They were standing at the side of it, between them and its walls a stretch of spiky weeds. Clouds had started to roll in while they had been walking: fat and heavy and grey, squatting in the sky like miserable buddhas. The walls of the monastery blended in, towering above them, the bell tower still wounded and bleeding rust.

‘Grim place,’ Ethan said softly.

‘Is this where you were?’ Rosie asked. ‘Y’know when you saw it?’

‘Saw what?’ Ethan asked, fixing her with a glare.

Thea blushed. ‘I don’t know. Something. I couldn’t tell what it was.’

A bird. A piece of plastic. A face.

‘Ooh, I bet there are some juicy ghosts up there.’ Rosie rubbed her hands together. ‘I love a good ghost story. Don’t believe them, but love watching all of that real ghost hunters’ stuff; the psychics pretending like they’re talking to the dead. It’s hilarious!’

Ethan cracked his knuckles and sighed and Thea could tell by his expression that he thought they were a pair of impressionable idiots.

‘Helllloooo!’ Rosie threw her arms wide and twirled around. ‘Heeelllllooooo, ghosties! Here we are! Come talk to us, ghosties!’