Isobel shook her head. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Yes, of course the words matter, but without the book’s embodiment as a distinct physical object, where is it? What space does it have to call its own? Where’s its soul? Where’s our soul? When books are ruined, everything is ruined. It will get worse, too. Much, much worse. When it does, everyone will be sorry but at least they’ll know I tried to do something. Me and perhaps a handful of others. Though no one has gone as far as I have.’ Isobel looked embarrassed. ‘It sounds grandiose to call it a cause, but that’s what it is: it’s my cause.’

‘My favourite novel of all time is Moby-Dick,’ Simon told her. ‘Yesterday I chucked my old copy away. It was knackered. I’ve ordered an e-reader. A Kindle. I’m going to read Moby-Dick on that from now on.’

‘No, you’re going to give it to me as soon as it arrives, to replace my broken Kobo,’ Charlie’s voice came from behind him.

‘Your electronic Moby-Dick will be soulless and lifeless,’ Isobel said sadly. ‘You’ll see it one day. You’ll all see it – but it’ll be too late by then. Still, at least I’ll know I did my best. What more can I do?’

‘Why did you send Sondra Halliday two novels?’ Simon asked.

‘I was trying to teach her. She can’t have read much fiction if she has so little imagination. If you reduce everyone to a member of a sex class, as she calls it, and drone on about it endlessly – this group being like this, and that group being like that – well, you miss all the exceptions. And, when you think about it, isn’t nearly everybody an exception? A special case of some sort?’

‘I’d say so, yes,’ Simon agreed. It was strange, agreeing with a murderer.

‘In Beloved, a mother kills her baby daughter to save her – from life as a slave. In Jude the Obscure, one of the children kills himself and his siblings in a wrongheaded act of altruism – he believes he’s helping his parents. Sondra Halliday’s blinkered, vindictive sex war has absolutely nothing to do with the killings in either of those stories, yet that’s the lens through which she insists on seeing every single thing. I wanted to teach her that there are other possible motives, not just misogyny.’

‘How did you persuade them to let you in – Linzi, Rhian, Josh and Angela?’ Simon asked.