I haven’t been paying enough attention to this stuff. We deny the things we can’t control, right? But right now with Sidney’s message so fresh in my mind, with O’s disappearance looming, it’s hard not to put two and two together. Reverse engineering. Intrusions. The medical trial that BigSky don’t want to let go of after all. Their new ‘liminal programming’ that is so close to what I can do . . . except they claim to be able to do it with software.

What else might they do with software? If they have access to my Secret Diaries, they could reverse engineer based on me. . .

Roman insists that the Creeper is a phenomenon, not a person. What if it’s some sort of bot?

What if all of O’s paranoia about BigSky is perfectly well founded? What if they are using the Creeper to come after both of us? If I were them and I wanted to get rid of me and I knew O was protecting me, I’d go after her first. But that still doesn’t explain Sidney’s message.

‘Charlie! Touchdown in Dorking!’

I abandon the search and rush to his side.

‘How many?’

‘Two. They followed the Westway and then the major roads. If I didn’t know they were birds, I’d have thought we were following a car. There’s another one going straight down the M23, and the four that went south-east are circling around Convoys Wharf. None of them has settled yet. So what’s at Convoys Wharf?’

It’s clearly a rhetorical question – meaning it’s directed at one or more of his bots – but I hear myself answer it anyway. My voice sounds choked in my own ears.

‘Martin Elstree lives there. He actually gave me his keys.’

Little bird

Little bird

‘Tell me, Daphne, have you ever met a man called Martin Elstree?’

I’ve left Roman scoffing sandwiches in the car, so it’s just Daphne and me in the exercise studio.

‘Doesn’t ring a bell,’ she says. ‘But then, my memory is rather a shipwreck.’

Daphne hasn’t asked where O is or why I’ve come too late for lunch, and she doesn’t remember me as the copy centre girl any more. This time she seems to think I’m her yoga instructor. She insisted on wriggling into her leotard and going into the exercise room with me. I desperately try to remember yoga poses that I’ve seen Antonio do while I probe Daphne about O’s possible whereabouts. She doesn’t seem to know anything, and she’s not having one of her good days. I’m getting desperate.

‘I thought perhaps O had spoken of Elstree,’ I tell Daphne. ‘Or that he’d visited you here?’