‘Why can’t you just believe me? You know as well as I do what it’s done to her. She’s completely changed. And Cecilia too. That’s proof, isn’t it?’

‘Proof of what?’

‘That they’re real. That they’re actually real.’

He picked up his plastic cup and downed its contents, ran his index finger over his lips and then sat there rubbing his thumb against the part of the finger that had got wet.

‘She was damaged by the things that happened, that’s obvious and hardly all that surprising, given what you went through and what the papers wrote. But to say it’s because of the …’

He broke off abruptly.

‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ he said.

‘You know what? I don’t either.’

‘Then why are we?’

‘Because we have to, Roland. Don’t ask me how it works, but we’re somehow prevented from talking about these things. Can’t you sense it, the resistance, the almost physical aversion? I’ve been thinking it must be part of their cover. It’s like some kind of mental block.’

Roland had crossed his arms and was studying me; he was clearly waiting for a chance to speak.

‘Would you like a pint, I’m going to go buy a pint.’

The door to his office was locked…

The door to his office was locked; it was so unexpected Anders pushed the handle down over and over again and even yanked it hard. Then he took a step back. Why was the bloody door locked?

While he stood there just staring at the closed door, something happened inside him. It was like a shifting, inside his head. He waited for things to clear. They didn’t. The feeling lingered, but when he tried to grasp it, it retreated inward like a cat under a sofa.

Nothing remained of the good humour that had had him whistling on his way to the laboratory building. Now he felt almost sick. He grabbed the clutch of keys hanging by his stomach. The key slid into the lock but he couldn’t turn it.

Why couldn’t he get in? He looked at the sign to the right of the door. The tag with his name was gone. Puzzled, he looked around. The sign on the next door over said ‘Per Ahlqvist’. So he hadn’t gone to the wrong room.