Despite their pleading, I bade farewell to Mum, Dad and Lady Hamilton, crept out of the house and sped to my apartment on Joffy’s motorbike. I parked outside the front door in clear defiance of the Goliath and SpecOps agents who were still waiting for me. I ambled slowly in; it would take them twenty minutes or more to report to base and then get up the stairs and break down the door—and I really only needed to pack a few things. I still had my memories of Landen, and they would sustain me until I got him back. Because I would get him back—but I needed time to rest and recuperate and bring our child into the world with the minimum of fuss, bother and interruptions. I packed four tins of Moggilicious cat food, two packets of Mintolas, a large jar of Marmite and two dozen AA batteries into a large holdall along with a few changes of clothing, a picture of my family and the copy of Jane Eyre with the bullet lodged in the cover. I placed a sleepy and confused Pickwick and her egg into the holdall and zipped up the bag so that only her head stuck out. I then sat and waited on a chair in front of the door with a copy of Great Expectations on my lap. I wasn’t a natural bookjumper, and without my travelbook I was going to need the fear of capture to help catapult me through the boundaries of fiction.

I started to read at the first knock on the door and continued through the volley of shouts for me to open up, past the muffled thuds and the sound of splintered wood, until finally, as the door fell in, I melted into the dingy interior of Great Expectations and Satis House.

Miss Havisham was understandably shocked when I explained what I needed, and even more shocked at the sight of Pickwick, but she consented to my request and cleared it with the Bellman— on the proviso that I’d continue with my training. I was hurriedly inducted into the Character Exchange Program and given a secondary part in an unpublished book deep within the Well of Lost Plots—the woman I was replacing had for some time wanted to take a course in drama at the Reading Academy of Dramatic Arts, so it suited her equally well. As I wandered down to subbasement six, Exchange Program docket in hand made out to someone named Briggs, I felt more relaxed than I had for weeks. I found the correct book sandwiched between the first draft of an adventure in the Tasman Sea and a vague notion of a comedy set in Bomber Command. I picked it up, took it to one of the reading tables and quietly read myself into my new home.