As the taxi wends its way across London, we schuss across a high plateau on the ice planet of Yon (yes, that’s really the name, commercially registered and approved by BigSky’s_Oxbridge numpties crack team of marketing experts). The penguins waddle alongside us but they can’t keep up, so they sort of take a running start and then glide on their bellies, whee! Super cute. The sky is deep violet studded with multicoloured stars and there’s a line of dark green sea just visible beyond our snowy plateau. Our sledge is being pulled by seven fat reindeer with strings of fairy lights in their antlers. Unlike real reindeer, they don’t flash their bumholes when they run. Apart from that, I find it convincing and a huge improvement on East London. Sorry, Hackney.

‘So, no visible bumholes: pro or con?’

‘Con, of course,’ Antonio says. ‘This is an imaginary planet, but if we are to believe we’re really there, the animals should be realistic. No anus, no excretion, no reality.’

Antonio has such a lovely accent that he even makes ‘anus’ sound romantic.

‘I think it’s a good thing. AR is supposed to be an improvement on reality. And maybe they excrete some other way.’

‘In that case they should not look like reindeer. They could be reptilian or insect or something even more alien.’

‘Like a Puffle?’

‘Or a Tribble.’

‘They could have more fur, I guess,’ I say. ‘As a cover-up.’

‘More fur would be fine with me.’

‘I never had you for a realist, Antonio.’

‘I am very much the realist. Wow, did you see that? A shooting star!’

As the taxi stops at lights, we admire the meteor shower on the alien planet generated by Antonio’s Spacetime. I am in this safe little world with him, don’t have to look out of the cab window at the real London. Don’t have to think about the person assigned to wash the blood off the pavement where Melodie fell while the morning traffic starts up and London goes on without her.

Don’t have to wonder how the Creeper did it. Or why.

Penguins are good.

Antonio sees me into O’s building and then jumps back in the cab to teach his first Movement Art & Science class in Mayfair. I trudge up the stairs and stand outside O’s flat fumbling with my keys; the door opens from inside and O is there in her wheelchair.

‘It will upset you greatly to hear this,’ she informs me. ‘But the business line has been flooded with enquiries. It seems that Melodie Tan’s death has worked in your favour.’

I shut the door behind me. O wheels to her workstation and starts giving me the rundown.

‘No, stop it, O!’ I say. ‘My client has died. I can’t. I just can’t hear this right now.’