Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

But to no avail.

Within a few seconds they had vanished and Mrs Nesbit had arrived, wanting to know where the cylinder was. She was shouting now, demanding, coercing . Louder and louder until I was about to draw my Bambi and attack her, when someone else appeared.

‘Birgitta?’

She was right there in front of me, eternally unchanged, dressed in her dungarees and the man’s shirt, holding the brushes, hair carelessly tied up. She smiled, told me she loved me, and I, in return, told her I loved her too. There was a pause, the waves crashed on the beach, and there was a gurgle of a child’s laugh as the beach ball bounced past.

‘Charlie? Are you okay?’

I looked at Birgitta and she suddenly appeared older, more careworn, and in an instant she wasn’t Birgitta at all but Zsazsa, and I was back in the dining room with the Dormiselle staring at me. My hand was still gripped around the butt of the Bambi, my thumb on the safety but thankfully I hadn’t drawn the weapon – or worse. I had been seconds away from attacking an entirely imaginary foe. I carefully released my hold on the Bambi, palms damp with sweat.

‘Shit,’ I said, now knowing precisely what had taken Moody and Suzy. The blue Buick dream had swept over them, too, in a suffocating alternative reality, and they’d tried to kill the hectoring Mrs Nesbit, and been killed themselves. But I had a secret weapon: Birgitta. She’d just saved my life, and quite possibly Zsazsa’s as well.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Zsazsa again.

‘I’m fine,’ I said, the return from the event almost as rapid as the descent.

I took a drink of water and stared at Zsazsa.

‘So how did you know about Mrs Buckley and the remote farm in Lincolnshire?’

She cocked her head on one side and stared at me.

‘Information has a price, my young friend. Two thousand euros.’

We haggled for almost five minutes, and settled on eight hundred euros, a dozen Snickers, three Cornettos and a Favour. We shook hands on it, and she began.

‘It was when I was still a Mrs Nesbit, over thirty years ago. You’re too young to remember.’

‘True,’ I said, ‘but you’re still familiar.’

‘I’m glad of that. NesCorp Holdings gave a lot of funding to HiberTech in those days, so I often travelled over here for press junkets, announcing some new discovery or other. I was the face of Morphenox during its initial roll-out, and I was always treated very well.’

She looked around and lowered her voice.

‘On one of these trips Don Hector took me aside and asked if I would assist with some high-level research work. I said I would – you don’t turn down someone like Don Hector – so I signed reams and reams of non-disclosure contracts and they had me stand in a room. Lots of light, the air kind of alive with static – then they had me recite some of the usual Mrs Nesbit bullshit: products to buy, tips for the busy homemaker, how to balance your chores in the kitchen with wanting to be down the pub, advice on weight gain, that sort of stuff.’

‘So?’

‘Before we did all this, I’d been asked to do a sound check and I used the “remote farm in Lincolnshire” line as I always do. Ripple-dissolve thirty years on and Suzy Watson, Roscoe Smalls and Moody all had their dream with Mrs Nesbit saying the same thing – before the hectoring started in a voice that wasn’t mine.’

She stopped talking. I’d had exactly the same thing.

‘Did this high-level research project have a name?’

‘It was part of something called Dreamspace .’

Shamanic Bob had mentioned something by that name, but hadn’t gone into any detail.

‘What was Dreamspace meant to do?’

‘I’ve no idea, but the technician said I was going to be their first “Dream Avatar”, whatever that is. And that’s my lot. I’ll expect payment as soon as you have it.’

She stood up as Lloyd approached the table, thanked me for the coffee and moved back to her table.

The porter placed my scrambled eggs in front of me and then left. I tried the eggs. The low points were colour, taste and consistency, with warmth the only redeeming feature. True to Aurora’s demand, it was a double portion, which given the low quality of the food was not quite as good a deal as I’d hoped. But my mind, as usual, was on other matters. I reread the piece of paper Zsazsa had given me.

We know of a remote farm in Lincolnshire where Mrs Buckley lives.

This was, I realised, the first piece of true evidence that there was a viral dream. But quite why it was featuring a line of dialogue from a decades-old sound test, I had no idea. I was still as much in the dark now as I was when I arrived – in fact, I was probably more confused.

‘Hey,’ came a voice close behind.

Jonesy sat down opposite and sniffed the coffee pot gingerly.

‘By St Etienne,’ she said, pulling a face, ‘what they say about the Siddons coffee is true. Kip well?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘on the whole, yes, I think so.’

‘Good. What’s that you’re eating?’

‘It’s an indeterminate foodstuff masquerading as scrambled egg.’

Jonesy picked up a spoon and prodded the grey mass gingerly. It wobbled as though irritated by the intrusion. She pulled a face, but helped herself to a spoonful anyway.

‘I bumped into Aurora on the way over,’ she murmured.

‘Oh dear,’ I said.

‘Are you insane?’ she said. ‘Truly, I mean, out-of-your-head insane? Toccata’s going to have your tongue out.’

‘We didn’t,’ I said.

‘Then why did she tell me you did?’

‘She’s using it to annoy the Chief.’

Jonesy stared at me for a while, unsure if I was telling the truth or not.

‘Let’s get to work,’ she said finally, ‘and look, I don’t care one way or the other if the big A is using you to scratch an itch, but think very carefully of actions , Wonky. They have a dismaying tendency to be followed by consequences, and sometimes quite bad ones.’

I followed her out of the Winterlounge and, once booted and suited, we stepped outside and walked to her Sno-Trac. The temperature had fallen since the previous evening and the air was as crisp as a wafer. There was barely a breath of wind, the sky was a deep azure and ice crystals on the snow glistened like diamonds in the sunshine.

‘I thought there was a storm coming in,’ I said.

‘There is. Six hours from now you won’t be able to see your hand in front of your face.’

I started the Sno-Trac and drove off in the direction of the Consulate.

‘We’ve got a problem,’ said Jonesy. ‘How many people did you tell about Lucky Ned?’

My heart sank.

‘I might have… mentioned something to Lloyd.’

‘Here’s some advice: if you’ve got a secret that you want everyone to know about, confide in a porter. There are just over seventy porters in the sector looking after nearly two hundred Dormitoria, who are now so familiar with Bonanza , Dynasty and Crossroads that they act them out in their spare time for fun. When they’re not doing that, they’re on the Open Network, gossiping, and last night you were the hot topic. Half think that you’re an idiot to kill Ned, as retribution will surely rain upon all our heads, a little under half think that you did the right thing but were out of your tiny stupid mind, and of the remainder, three people couldn’t give a toss so long as Gaer Brills comes last in The Great Albion Sleep Off – and one was convinced that the Gronk has returned to feed on the shame of the unworthy.’