‘I don’t know the details, but he abandoned the first study – your group – and went off with another company to develop the treatment that I take.’

‘Little Bird, you mean. Wait, you are taking Little Bird’s treatment?’ O has been omitting a lot of stuff from what she’s told me. She said she knew Meera’s work, but not that Daphne was involved with Bernard and Meera.

‘Daphne, would you be willing to talk to the Dream Police about this?’

‘Of course not. I’ve said too much already. If anyone pursues the subject I’ll just revert to talking about the benefits of flaxseed oil. Marvellous stuff!’

‘Please, no, Daphne. Just tell me one more thing. How do you do it? How do you make someone sleepwalk?’

‘Oh, it’s easy. You just open the dreamer like a wind-up toy and step inside, you know. That’s how I do it, anyway. Did you see who was controlling the harp girl?’

‘No. I didn’t.’

I can’t help it – I launch myself to my feet and begin to pace. There are mirrors along one wall of the yoga studio and I can see my own face. I look like I’ve been hit by a bus. What is happening?

‘It’s too bad. Because if you had witnessed it, you could run the hack on them in reverse. Push through them in the dream and go back to their point of origin. Find out who they really are and do to them what they did to their victim.’

Everything Daphne just said runs around in my head, connecting and disconnecting and getting tangled up.

‘O got hacked,’ I blurt, still pacing. ‘Yesterday. She got hacked, I’m sure of it, and she fell. Who was that, Daphne? What’s the deal with this Agency? I mean, seriously, to give a brain-altering treatment to a group of dementia patients and then turn them loose on the population—’