‘I’m sorry about that,’ O says. ‘But I want Daphne to live out her life in peace. And you have killed a man, thereby proving that even the smallest worm turns in the end.’

She really has me checkmated. No matter what I do, she wins. Every action I’ve taken to try to save myself has only driven me deeper into her labyrinth.

There’s a loud crack, like a gunshot, and I flinch. Too late, I understand that the ice has cracked in two just beside the table where we are sitting. Our side of the crack pitches abruptly down and we slide, O in her wheelchair and me falling out of my dining chair, while our table topples into the gap. Amid a rain of salad and croutons and wine, we fall.

I grab at O wildly and manage to grasp her ankle. I stay with her psychically, too, following her mental presence back through the shreds of her dream. I need to know where she is.

The scene changes. O is in a sunlit bedroom. It’s rustic, with a brass bedstead and oak furniture, a high view of fields lined with poplars. Thread of single-lane carriageway, faint haze of distant ocean. O sleeps curled on her side, on top of the duvet but with a throw blanket over her legs. She’s wearing a blue-and-white striped kaftan that’s too big for her, so that she looks like a child. She has begun to stir. Soon the dream will break up and I’ll be forced out, but for the moment I’m still sharing her consciousness.

I look around the room for anything that could identify her location. Spilled across the bed are the contents of one of the bureau drawers, mostly papers. One looks like a legal document. I pick it up to see it better. It’s O’s will.

There is my name.

‘To Charlotte Aaron I leave my shares in Little Bird . . .’

She wasn’t kidding. She named me in her will – but not to help me. To control me, like the tool I’ve always been. I’m trying to put my thoughts in order when I hear Daphne’s voice, behind me, pantomime-style.

‘I’m afraid I am here to remove you. I’ve been given my orders.’

I turn. In the dream, Daphne’s voice is breaking and there are tears in her eyes as she looks right at me. Her eye sockets enlarge and her face begins to whiten, and stretch, and harden. Chemical bonds etch themselves its surface until her face has become the flat mask of the Creeper. She moves towards me and I realise I can’t breathe. I can’t move.

I’m rigid.