He had the wit to clean up, washing the residuum of Rove from his hands. He also changed clothes, then went to find Sabreur and Matchell, the government bods. They were talking to the thuggish caveman who’d given him so much trouble before. Not ideal, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“Right, listen,” he said. “You’re going home, right? ‘Real Earth’ home?”

They were frowning at him, as he’d interrupted their conversation. But he reckoned what he had to say was way more important. The woman, Matchell, was narrow-eyed though, and he had the sudden premonition that she somehow knew what he’d done.

“I want to make a deal,” Lucas said hurriedly. “With MI5. I know a crap-ton of what Rove’s been up to and I can help you dismantle his entire operation. In return, I want a pardon, a new identity. A deal.”

“Where’s Rove?” Matchell asked slowly, and Lucas knew he couldn’t dissemble. Not with the bloody evidence in the next room.

I

“Spiker,” Alison said, and then nothing else.

Julian found his arm had slipped down until it was around her waist, and her hip and thigh were pressed against his. Her head was turned slightly, lips an inch from his cheek so that he could feel the flutter of her breath. All terribly genteel. Yet under the skin, he found that he wanted her in a way that was more powerfully physical and erotic than anything he had allowed himself to feel in a decade. We are at the end of the world. Civilized considerations need not apply. Right now, there was nothing preventing the two of them just finding a chamber within Cam and tearing each other’s clothes off. Nothing beyond the checks they carried within themselves.

Julian felt the moment stretch, excruciatingly aware of Alison’s own stillness. Knowing that she was waiting to see what path they would take, and that if he said yes then she would say yes too. Then they’d have committed themselves to the one thing that had been the elephant in whatever room they’d shared for years. Julian fancied he could hear the universe holding its breath.