“How was it?” the Hippie asks, although it’s weird thinking about him as the Hippie, when he’s nothing like the version I remember.

“How was what?”

“The week?”

“The week?”

“That bad, huh? Cannot say I envy you, bouncing from one place to another like this. Très difficile, non? Anyway, you are here now.”

He follows me into the lounge, smoothing his suit. His suit. I take a deep breath and try to settle my nerves, but that’s like telling a cornered tiger to take it easy.

“Are you sure you’re OK?” he says. “You are not yourself, chérie.”

“I’m OK,” I mumble.

“You have cut your hair,” he says. “Not so?”

“No. It’s just wet.”

“Qu’est-ce qu’il s’est passé?” he says.

“Wh-what do you mean?” I stammer.

“You have a bump. On your head.”

“It’s nothing.” My hand touches it instinctively, feeling the hotness, the slipperiness of rainwater on my skin.

Then it hits me. If Bea was snatched away on the Tube by some monster, and the Hippie isn’t the Hippie anymore, and the door isn’t the door and the sky isn’t the sky…then what else is wrong in the world?

I turn and I look at Gad. “Where’s the Old Man?” I know his answer before he opens his mouth. The terrace. But I’m wrong.

“In the conservatory,” Gad says. “Comme d’habitude.”

And it hits me…

Anomaly #4: We don’t have a conservatory.

10

A conservatory. When did that happen? How? The Old Man sits with his back to me. He’s barefoot, wearing his check shirt and scruffy jeans. On the table in front of him, under his fingers, lies an open book. The table is the same battered cedarwood thing we’ve always had, and here are the two garden chairs crying out that the world is normal. But the rain drums on a glass roof…and I stand in the doorway in shock.

And that’s when I notice the smell. Most days, the house reeks of incense, which Gad and the Old Man light by the shedload. Today, it smells…animal.

No. That’s not true. I’m imagining things.

The Old Man turns his head, as if sensing me. “That you, darling?”

What do I say? I want to tell him about the door, the Hippie, the sky. Everything. Most of all, I want to tell him about Bea.

But I don’t. I can’t.

“Come,” he says, waving his hand. “Join me.”