Next day, he asks her if she could ever love him. She says that if only she were the twin sister he has talked to her about, he would be her ideal lover. This exchange will eventually lead Robert to change his life irrevocably. When they move to London, Robert disappears from their lives. The 1996 narrative is an account of Terry's experiences in Dr Dudden's sleep clinic at Ashdown, interwoven with scenes from Sarah's life.
Terry is now a freelance film critic, hooked on coffee and cinema.
The elaborate fourteen-hour dreams that occupied most of his student life have long gone and he has hardly slept since he left university. When he hears that Ashdown has become a sleep clinic, his curiosity is aroused and he registers for treatment. Terry has lost touch with Sarah since the magazine article debacle, but when he mentions her in passing to Dr Dudden, the doctor becomes strangely agitated. Rather than setting out to cure Terry of his insomnia, Dudden wants to emulate him. To Dudden, sleep rather than insomnia is the disease to be eradicated.