Behind are the oil refineries of Iraq, the endless fields of Turkey and, further back, the vacillating topography of Europe: the A-roads, autoroutes, autostrada, the freeway that has led me here to this rasping beach, these waves littered with casually flung diamonds, this blow torch on my back, turning me a madder red and all else blazing glitter.

I cannot return home. Perhaps not ever. The mammoth oceangoing junks are anchored way off. They are waiting for me. Weighed down with the desert’s siphoned blood supply. They know how to steer down the side of the world without falling off. If I do not go by sea, then I will fly thirty thousand feet above the earth, at six hundred miles per hour, and I will land, perhaps not on the moon, but I will be ready for it. I will be ready for anything.

And this is what I want.

Epilogue: Under the Carpet at Windsor

Queen Charlotte of England was desperate for some entertainment. She scratched her greater wing of sphenoid bone and yawned, breathlessly. It was so dreadfully dull lying prone in the chapel at Windsor, shorn of skin, with nothing sensible to do, for an eternity. Why be bored senseless when one could walk through walls and see what the latest new generation was getting up to? If only she could tell them to stop their constant complaining and get on with creating lots of interesting new experiences for themselves, because, when all was said and done, memories are all they will have to console them when they are dead.

Charlotte was still missing such basic earthly delights as riding side-saddle round the thousands of acres of Windsor Great Park, her dogs, her jewellery, the occasional soirée, her elephants that were housed in a paddock at Buckingham Palace, and O, how she had loved painting, playing the harpsichord, dancing ‘The Hempdresser’, reading books and going to the theatre.

Georgie was asleep as usual. He rarely woke up these days. It was such a tragedy that he should die blind, deaf and mad. (Although such a relief that at least he couldn’t expose himself any more.) He had never got over joining the great unwashed of the netherworld, among whom he was afforded no special status whatsoever. At the end of his reign he once talked for fifty-three hours non-stop. Better he sleep, she mused, than that she should endure another round of his demented conversation.

‘I am still appalled we lost America. Do you think we can get it back?’

‘Oh, Georgie. You’ve still got a touch of the old madness yet.’

‘Do we still have Ireland, Lottie darling?’

‘Only some of it and only just. I personally believe we should hand it over.’

‘Hush, woman! You know you are not allowed to meddle in politics. What about slavery? Do we have any? Anywhere in the world?’

‘It was officially abolished during your reign. Do you not remember?’