Distracted by a call from a TV producer, Dick had allowed me to slip away to the park. Already I regretted taking part in the experiment. Dick’s carelessness, whether deliberate or not, had nearly led me to drown myself. Annoyingly, he was far more interested in my messianic attempt to walk on water than in my vision of Shepperton as a solar garden, a sleeping paradise waiting to be woken from every stone and leaf.

Trying to steady my mind, I stared at the bedroom ceiling. Whenever my gaze lingered for more than a few seconds a festering sore appeared in the old plaster, as if my eyes were transmitting a virulent disease, a Gorgon-stare that turned a minute insect stain into a throbbing infection. Soon the suppurating plaster was covered with a plague of boils. Trying to recapture their paradise vision, the optical centres of my brain were misreading the smallest cues in the play of light across the quiet room.

I covered my eyes and listened to the children enjoying an impromptu party with Cleo and her daughter. Their voices calmed me, but when I moved my hand I saw that flies covered every inch of the room. Their trembling wings seethed on the sheets and pillows, cloaking my hands in black mittens. Trying to drive them away, I touched my scalp and found that a piece of my skull was missing. The tips of my fingers dipped into the soft tissues of my brain …

Hearing my cry, Cleo left the children and ran up the staircase. She sat on the bed and placed my hands in her lap, shaking her head over the afternoon’s folly. Looking up at her concerned face, I could still see the nimbus of light that had followed her through the riverside trees. I remembered the benediction she had bestowed on every starling and blade of grass.

“Jim … shall I telephone Richard? I ought to ring your local doctor.”

“No—but call Peggy Gardner. I’ll come out of it soon.” The last person I wanted around was Miriam’s sometime physician, still under the thumb of Midwife Bell and ready to cast doubt on my fitness as a parent. Shortcuts to paradise and shamanistic visions belonged to the dubious realm of backstreet abortions and nutmeg addiction. I moved my hands gingerly to my scalp, relieved that my skull was intact. “My fingers are so sensitive—I thought I’d pushed them into my brain. Are the children all right?”

“They’re fine—I’ve invented a new game for them. They think you’ve got sunstroke.”

“I have! That intense light—for a few seconds this afternoon I saw … heaven and hell.”

“That must be one of Richard’s overdoses.” There was a hint of criticism, as if she were well aware of Dick’s ambiguous experiments. “I hope it was worth it.”