Think you might want to stay?

Too early to tell yet. Saw the Queen today; a character. I'll tell you about it later; you won't believe. I've been moved within the palace from a rather spartan but characterful room to something that looks like it's been filched wholesale from the nearest Ramada. How's things with you?

Fine. Working on a big restructuring exercise for two of the biochemical multis. Also taking part in (mostly e-mail) discussions about MAI fall-out. Domestically, looking after bambinos while Emma visits old girlfriend in Boston...Hello? Kate? You still there?

Sorry. Sorry for the hiatus. Some sort of glitch at this end. Had to reconnect.

I awoke, breathless again.

Where was I?  Where had I been?

I couldn't even remember what the original problem had been, what slight or remark, what insult or minor injury had occasioned the incident.  All I remembered was that I had gone to Mrs Telman for comfort, and received a strange sort of it.

She held me.  I sobbed into her bosom.  It was probably a very expensive blouse I was soaking with my tears, but at least I was too young to be allowed to wear mascara; the marks of my fury and despair would soon dry and leave no mark.

We were in the hotel in Vevey where Mrs Telman stayed whenever she came to visit me at the International School.  Lac Léman was a dark presence in the night, its white-flecked surface visible by moonlight between the wintry showers that fell upon the waters from the mountains.  I was fourteen or fifteen.  Young enough still to need to be held sometimes, old enough to be troubled by, even ashamed of such a need.  She smelled of the exotic perfumes I remembered from her car, six years earlier.

'But it's not fair!'

'Life is not, Kathryn.'

'You're always saying that.'

'When it stops being true, I'll stop saying it.'

'But it should be fair!'

'Of course it should.'

'Well, then, why can't it be?'

'Why can't we all live in palaces and never have to work?  Why can't we all be happy and never have to cry?'

'I don't know,' I said defiantly (I'd begun to get used to this sort of rhetorical defence). 'Why can't we?'

Mrs Telman smiled and offered me her handkerchief. 'There are two schools of thought.'

I rolled my eyes dramatically.  She ignored me and went on. 'Some people will tell you that we can never have true fairness, or justice, or happiness, or freedom from having to work.  We are sinners and we deserve no better anyway.  However, if we do as we're told, we may achieve perfect happiness for ever after our own death.  That is one point of view.  Another is that we may begin to attain all those goals in this world if we apply ourselves, even if the final fulfilment of those dreams will certainly take place after our own death.

'I prefer the second outlook, though I accept I could be wrong.  But, Kathryn, in the meantime, you must understand that the world is not fair, that it does not owe you a living or even an apology, that you have no right to expect happiness, and that all too often the world can seem like a mad, bad place to be.

'When people behave rationally, kindly, generously and lovingly towards you or those you care about, be grateful; appreciate it and make the most of it at the time, because it is not necessarily the normal way of things at all.  Reason, kindness, generosity and love can seem like very rare resources indeed, so make the most of them while they are around.'

'I just don't know why people have to be horrible to other people.'

'Kathryn, unless you are a saint, you must know.'

'But I don't!'

'You mean you've never been horrible to anyone?  Never teased other girls, never been unkind, never been secretly delighted when something bad happened to somebody you don't like?  Or are you going to tell me there's nobody you don't like?'

'But they were horrible to me first!'

'And they probably thought they had their reasons.  You're very clever.  Some people resent clever people; they think they're showing off.'

'What's wrong with being clever?' I asked indignantly.

'A lot, if you're not a very clever person yourself and you feel that a clever person is showing off or trying to make you look stupid.  It's like a strong person showing off how strong they are.'

'But I don't care if people are strong!  They can show off how strong they are as much as they like; I won't care.'

'Ah, yes, but then you're clever.'

'But that's not— !' I did not say the word 'fair'.  I balled the handkerchief she had given me in my hand and thudded my head against her chest again. 'That's not right,' I said lamely.

'It's right to them.' She held me and patted me on the back. 'And that's all that matters.  To themselves, people are usually right.'

I felt for the bedside table.  I was in Thulahn, in Thuhn, in the royal palace.  I found the little monkey and rubbed it between my fingers.

In my dream the old Queen had been a cross between one of the demon-warriors that guarded her bedchamber, and the netsuke monkey that guarded my bedside.  There was some sort of fading thing about monkey guards my subconscious had probably filched from The Wizard of Oz, but it was all already pretty vague and strange and just not of this world.  In my dream I had been trapped inside a dark, cold palace carved within a mountain.  It was full of smoke and I had been stumbling around trying to find the Queen but then I'd been chased through the fume-filled halls by…something.  Or a lot of somethings.  I could hear them whispering but I couldn't make out what they were saying, because somebody had pulled out half their teeth.  They kept the removed teeth in little pouches on their belts, where the teeth clicked and rattled in a jittery accompaniment to their lisping voices.

Whatever they were, I knew that if they touched me there was something in their touch, in their sweat, that would burn and burrow down to my bones and poison me and make me one of them; dark wraiths of pain consigned to wander the hollowed-out palace for ever.

They could run faster than me, but there was some sort of rule — or some sort of effect or gift that I had — that meant they couldn't bear the gaze of my eyes, and so I had to run backwards, keeping them always one corner or room or corridor or door behind, and running backwards had been slow and difficult and scary, because I couldn't be sure that there weren't any of them behind me too, lying in wait for me to run backwards into them, and so I had to keep glancing over my shoulder to make certain, and that gave the ones I was running away from in the first place a chance to catch up.  All the time I kept shouting, 'It's not fair!  It's not fair!  It's not fair!' while my feet clattered in the silence of the shadowy halls.

The dream ended unresolved, before they could catch me or I could finally make my escape to the world outside.  I awoke remembering my meeting with the Queen and the words of Mrs Telman, and needing to touch the little monkey, which was my guardian, just to know that it was what it was; something inanimate and fixed and incapable of malice or love, but, if anything, something on my side as well as by it, something made reassuring just by its familiarity, and talismanic by the illusory fidelity gained through the long continuity of its presence.