Within a couple of hours I knew I had made the right decision. I was soon working smoothly and, I hoped, well. Then, with about ten pages rewritten, I noticed a coincidence, a fragment of memory. I kept thinking about the short time I had spent on Dearth and the annoying enigma of mutability, the physical changes that were allegedly real at the time they occurred, but forgotten soon afterwards. The essential irrationality of that had always nagged at me.

Then it suddenly struck me that what I was doing to my novel draft was similar to what I knew of mutability.

The original text, the first draft, was forced into changes by my rewriting them. Once I had written them the new version seemed so natural, so organic to the book, that not only were they an improved version, I could no longer remember what my original draft had said. The outer perception of material reality, the inner perception of change without memory – as Frejah had tried to explain it to me.

The result was still only a first draft and would have to be revised before I sent it in as a finished manuscript, but I was confident that even with the extra work the overall delay would be slight. I worked on, encouraged by the thought. Hadn’t Frejah said that Salay Raba was an island with incipient mutability? Well, then.

Re-interpreting the phenomenon of mutability in this way, as something I could understand, I began to muse about the possibilities of writing a story about it.

Jo arrived home while this was going on. To break off from work to be with her was something so constant in our relationship that it was ordinary, not an interruption at all. The next day she departed for the long trip to Muriseay, and I continued with the draft.

I worked for a week, enjoying being in the house alone, cooking for myself, looking after the cat, taking my daily swim from the beach across the road from the house, and communicating with Jo by internet every evening. It was the kind of stable, productive existence I most relished. I did not mind being alone – I liked company, I liked solitude. They were pleasures of different aspect.

Spoder telephoned me again. I had not expected to hear from him, and to be frank I was not particularly pleased to do so. He always distracted me. It was the first time we had been in contact since the day we had been finally released by Ketty from the locked magic museum, emerging hot, bothered and soaked in perspiration.

‘Sir, did you ever wonder,’ he said without preamble, ‘what our man Willer did with the money he stole from his brother?’