Then she felt Quill and Sefton join in. They grabbed Costain around the wrists and pulled too. The three of them managed to haul him up. They staggered upright. They dashed for the doors as the floor continued to vanish from under their feet. They burst through them together and the carpeted hallway disintegrated as they ran. They raced up the stairs, which fell away behind them too, until they were standing once more, safe, in an empty, evacuated, normal bar. They all looked back to the entrance to the staircase. It all suddenly fell away in one moment, leaving a gap in the floor which, with a slam, replaced itself with the same wooden flooring as the bar had.

They stood there, panting.

‘This level must be the last one that’s, you know, real,’ said Costain.

‘I think everyone else got out,’ said Quill, ‘including Neil Gaiman.’

‘Neil Gaiman was down there?’ said Ross. ‘The writer?’

‘Yeah,’ said Quill. He looked around. He found a sign that said ‘private function’. He put it where the stairwell had been. ‘Nice guy.’

*   *   *

There was nobody in the bar upstairs either. Ross felt tremendous relief. ‘I think Terry Keel must have got everyone out,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he knew where the damage would stop.’

‘Hell of a lawsuit,’ said Quill, ‘collapse of reality.’

‘Shall we put out the call for him?’ asked Ross. She found she had to sit down, and dropped onto a bar stool. She looked at the floor and concentrated on the conversation. She sensed them all doing that, all willing each other to come up with the next useful sentence.

‘Complicated. Do you fancy lying to a court about the exact circumstances of him assaulting a police officer?’

‘Or his brother being assaulted by a police officer,’ said Costain.

‘You what?!’ said Sefton. Ross glanced up at him. He had a pent-up, angry look on his face.

‘I meant me,’ said Costain quickly, ‘I meant me thumping him, all right? I wasn’t thinking of—’

‘In the circumstances,’ said Quill quickly, stepping between them, ‘I think you were acting to protect yourself and your colleagues, Tony. And you, Kev … well, I don’t know what happened down there. Did you know that was going to happen?’

Sefton shook his head.

‘As your superior officer, I’m not going to be calling any of that to anyone’s attention, not even Lofthouse’s, so the fault’s now mine, all right?’

Sefton remained silent.