Neith’s eyes open unwillingly, and take in the faint pale gleam of night-time in the city, the cracked ceiling of her room. The hairline fracture cuts from one side to the other, in places almost invisible. It isn’t serious, just the legacy of a dry summer two years gone and the resultant shifting of London’s clay. She commands her body to obedience, to modesty and calm. The dream was starkly real, not the muzzy incompleteness of colourless, conjured images but the crystal certainty of waking. She half expects to feel his weight behind her still, and turns quickly to be sure she is in fact alone. And if she were not, what then? Horizontal combat? Arrest and interrogation? Or more sex?