‘Whales and waves and all that shit. Not strictly part of the tech, but I’ve got a feeling the punters will warm to that a bit more than to just listening to the clicks and whistles of what’s really going on. Secret: most of the important stuff isn’t even sound …’

Thea fast-forwarded chunks of it, until Moses came into the room halfway through the night. The voiceover came again.

‘So, this is the bit we need to refine, but right now I’m waking Ted up in strategic parts of his sleep and getting him to read the language textbooks. We’ll have to tweak that for public rollout as, much as I’d love to sneak into everyone’s bedroom every night like the frickin’ BFG, it’s an unworkable part of the tech right now.’

Thea clicked back on the main diary. Ted was still speaking Italian, and Moses was nodding and tapping a pen against his teeth as he swivelled in his chair.

‘Gonna need to get you someone Italian to talk with so’s I can fully check this is working cos honestly, bro, I have no clue what you’re saying …’

A hand and arm came into shot, placing a mug on the detritus of his desk.

‘Uh-uh, come here, Maxie …’

Moses grabbed the arm and pulled the woman briefly into shot, kissing her as if they were in the final scene of a rom-com. However, that wasn’t what made Thea gasp and nearly let the laptop slide off her knees.

The woman on the screen kissing Moses, wearing a floaty long dress and a brass twist of metal around her upper arm, had very long, very red, very familiar hair.

Moses wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kept her in shot, despite her trying to wriggle out.

‘Everyone, meet the very clever, very wise, incredibly sexy … Delores Maxwell!’

Chapter 31

Delores.

Delores Maxwell. Max, as he called her.

They had been a couple; he had created Morpheus while with her, living in an apartment together, laughing, kissing, making each other cups of tea.

The Delores back at the Sleep Centre, she knew this Moses, the sedated wreck of a man only a few feet from where Thea sat now. She’d hidden him in the monastery, left him to his madness. She’d stolen the tech from him and shoved him out of sight.

No wonder she hadn’t wanted him to be found.

Back on the laptop screen, the next entry was different to the last, just an empty room, Moses’s desk in the foreground. At first Thea thought the camera had been left on by mistake until she heard Delores’s voice.

‘We’re not going to get another chance like this.’ She moved into view.