Some kind of point proven, Ball Cap releases her and sits up. She spits out the paper. The man seems to drum a beat on her back with his feet, as if to a song in his head. She knows that this journey through the portal will go more easily if she doesn’t speak, simply does as she’s told, but she needs to know Josie is okay. She means to try to ask about her daughter pleasantly, as if enquiring about how she’s adapting to a new school, but the pyjamas Josie was wearing are in her hands, and a terrible fear about what that could mean transforms her enquiry between brain and mouth.

‘What have you done to my baby, you bastards? Where is she? Why did you take her pyjamas?’

‘We changed her, that’s all,’ Ball Cap said. ‘She said she’s not allowed to wear pyjamas once she’s up. You think I’m some sort of weirdo?’

That was right, she’d been taught to get dressed as soon as breakfast was over, but surely she wouldn’t undress in front of these Ogres. Had they forced her to…?

As if reading her mind, the guy beside her says, ‘We haven’t harmed her one little bit, okay? As is, it’s a kidnap. Imagine if the police happened to burst in and find a naked kid? That’s a sexual aspect right there, and you know what that means? Solitary confinement for my own safety. Not a place on earth I wouldn’t be hated. Especially for a little girl. Imagine that, everyone everywhere wanting to hurt you. And the prison screws would over-salt every meal I ever had. Think I’m stupid? I can hide from the killers. Can’t hide from the salt. So your kid’s dressed and she’s… let’s say she’s not unhappy. Except with you, that is. She’s annoyed at you. She thinks you sent her to us for being naughty before bedtime.’

Josie had spoken with these Ogres? She was a sociable girl, but…

‘I want to see her. I want to see my daughter now.’

Dominic speaks this time. ‘Have you got what we want, countess?’

Still, thankfully, she can’t see his face, but that word, countess, puts an ancient image in her mind: a yelling boy, a runaway bicycle, and herself rushing forward. She shuts it down before the scene can display her performing a mistake.

‘Hey, did you hear?’ he says.

A spike pierces her heart, worse than any pain she could have imagined. Here, she will be forced to say no. She can get it, she will say. She will promise to get it. But if they are expecting to take hold of the Forcefield right now, and they can’t… Josie could suffer the consequences.