“Yes … yes, it was.” I held her hand, waiting as the termites faded into the walls. Somewhere inside my head Cleo was still walking through the riverside forest, waiting for me to join her in the palace of light. Its doors stood ajar among the homely elms. In that paradise vision all her shyness had gone, she no longer hid her eyes behind her long hair and ever-ready smile. “It went to pieces at the end, but I saw something I’d never seen before, a dream of…”

“The real world?”

“All the real worlds. Everything was its original self…” Trying to explain myself, I reached out and touched her hair. “I told Dick that you looked like an archangel.”

She moved my hand from her cheek, frowning at my foolhardiness. “That should do wonders for my career. I hope you repeat that on the programme.”

“I will.” I raised myself and sat uncomfortably on the bed beside her. I wanted to embrace Cleo’s broad hips. One day she and I would make that river crossing together. “Cleo, tell me—was there any film in the camera?”

“I assume so—why?”

“People are easier to control when they think they’re going on television. It’s just Dick…”

“Perhaps you’ve been too trusting—but I imagine he understands you.”

She paused at the door, looking at me as if aware for the first time of my real motives for embarking on this risky expedition across my head.

*   *   *

If Cleo was prepared to put aside her doubts, Peggy Gardner was resolutely disapproving. During the next days I prowled the garden, staring at the sunflowers and the broken toys, as I tried to understand why the light had left them. The whole of Shepperton was drab and inert, exhausted by the effort of briefly becoming its real self. While the children were at school I walked down to the river, searching the trees for any sign of Cleo’s presence. As the sunlight pierced the foliage I caught hints of that magic glade where she had walked with the birds, dressed in light.

“You’ve let a Trojan horse into your mind,” Peggy told me, mustering a show of sympathy. “What were you really trying to do?”

I conducted the air, thinking of a reply. “‘Place the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible…’ It was stranger than I expected—I was actually looking inside my own head.”

“But, Jamie dear—we already know what’s there. It’s obvious to anyone who’s read a few pages.”

“Shadows on the wall. Dick was right—I was watching the brain at work, seeing it assemble pieces of time and space into a workable dream of life.” I pointed to the walls of my study and the sunlit garden. “All this is just as much a stage set as anything in Shepperton Studios.”

“And what happens when you move the stage sets out of the way?”