I opened my room door and kicked off my shoes, lay on the bed and stared at the polystyrene ceiling tiles, trying to come to terms with what I had always suspected but never wanted to face. My brother had fucked up. Nobody had bothered to put it so simply before; the military tribunal spoke of ‘tactical errors in the heat of the battle’ and ‘gross incompetence’. Somehow ‘Fucked up’ made it seem more believable; we all make mistakes at some time in our lives, some more than others. It is only when the cost is counted in human lives that people really take notice. If Anton had been a baker and forgotten the yeast, nothing would have been made of it, but he would have fucked up just the same.

As I lay there thinking I slowly drifted into sleep and with sleep came troubled dreams. I was back at Styx’s apartment block, only this time I was standing outside the back entrance with the upturned car, Commander Flanker and the rest of the SO-1 interview panel. Snood was there too. He had an ugly hole in his wrinkled forehead and was standing, arms crossed and looking at me as if I had taken his football and he had sought out Flanker for some kind of redress.

‘Are you sure you didn’t tell Snood to go and cover the back?’ asked Flanker.

‘Positive,’ I said, looking at them both in turn.

‘She did, you know,’ said Acheron as he walked past. ‘I heard her.’

Flanker stopped him.

‘Did you? What exactly did she say?’

Acheron smiled at me and then nodded at Snood, who returned his greeting.

‘Wait!’ I interrupted. ‘How can you believe what he says? The man’s a liar!’

Acheron looked offended and Flanker turned to me with a steely gaze.

‘We only have your word for that, Next.’

I could feel myself boil with inner rage at the unfairness of it all. I was just about to cry out and wake up when I felt a tap on my arm. It was a man dressed in a dark coat. He had heavy black hair that fell over his dour, strong features. I knew immediately who he was.

‘Mr Rochester?’

He nodded in return. But now we were no longer outside the warehouses in the East End; we were in a well-furnished hall, lit by the dim glow of oil lamps and the flickering light from a fire in the large hearth.

‘Is your arm well, Miss Next?’ he asked.

‘Very well, thanks,’ I said, moving my hand and wrist to demonstrate.

‘I should not trouble yourself with them,’ he added, indicating Flanker, Acheron and Snood, who had started to argue in the corner of the room near the bookcase. ‘They are merely in your dream and thus, being illusory, are of no consequence.’

‘And what about you?’

Rochester smiled, a forced, gruff smile. He was leaning on the mantelpiece and looked into his glass, swirling his Madeira delicately.

‘I was never real to begin with.’

He placed the glass on the marble mantel and flipped out a large silver hunter, popped it open, read the time and returned it to his waistcoat pocket in one smooth, easy movement.

‘Things are becoming more urgent, I can feel it. I trust I can count on your fortitude when the time comes?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I can’t explain. I don’t know how I managed to get here or even how you managed to get to me. You remember when you were a little girl? When you chanced upon us both that chill winter’s evening?’

I thought about the incident at Haworth all those years ago when I entered the book of Jane Eyre and caused Rochester’s horse to slip.

‘It was a long time ago.’

‘Not to me. You remember?’

‘I remember.’

‘Your intervention improved the narrative.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Before, I simply bumped into my Jane and we spoke briefly. If you had read the book prior to your visit you would have noticed. When the horse slipped to avoid you it made the meeting more dramatic, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘But hadn’t that happened already?’

Rochester smiled.

‘Not at all. But you weren’t the first visitor we have had. And you won’t be the last, if I’m correct.’

‘What do you mean?’

He picked up his drink again.

‘You are about to rouse from your sleep, Miss Next, so I shall bid you adieu. Again: I can trust in your fortitude when the time comes?’

I didn’t have time to answer or question him further. I was woken by my early morning call. I was in my clothes from the previous evening, the light and the television still on.

Apart from one other person I had the breakfast room all to myself. As fate would have it, that one other person was Colonel Phelps.

‘Good morning, Corporal!’ he said cheerfully as he spotted me trying to hide behind a copy of The Owl.

‘Colonel.’

He sat down opposite me without asking.

‘Good response to my presence here so far, y’know,’ he said genially, taking some toast and waving a spoon at the waiter. ‘You there, sir, more coffee. We’re having the talk next Sunday; you are still coming, I trust?’

‘I just might be there,’ I responded, quite truthfully.

‘Splendid!’ he gushed. ‘I must confess I thought you’d stumbled off the path when we spoke on the gasbag.’

‘Where is it being held?’

‘A bit hush-hush, old girl. Walls have ears, careless talk, all that rot. I’ll send a car for you. Seen this?’

He showed me the front page of The Mole. It was, like all the papers, almost exclusively devoted to the upcoming offensive that everyone thought was so likely there didn’t seem even the slightest hope that it wouldn’t happen. The last major battle had been in ‘75 and the memories and lessons of that particular mistake didn’t seem to have sunk in.

‘More coffee I said, sir!’ roared Phelps to the waiter, who had given him tea by mistake. ‘This new plasma rifle is going to clinch it, y’know. I’ve even thought of modifying my talk to include a request for anyone wanting a new life on the peninsula to start filing claims now. I understand from the Foreign Secretary’s office that we will need settlers to move in as soon as the Russians are evicted for good.’

‘Don’t you understand?’ I asked in an exasperated tone. ‘There won’t be an end. Not while we have troops on Russian soil.’

‘What’s that?’ murmured Phelps. ‘Mmm? Eh?’

He fiddled with his hearing aid and cocked his head to one side like a parakeet. I made a non-committal noise and left as soon as I could.

It was early; the sun had risen but it was still cold. It had rained during the night and the air was heavy with water. I put the roof of the car down in an attempt to blow away the memories of the night before, the anger that had erupted when I realised that I couldn’t forgive Landen. It was the dismay that I would always feel the same rather than the dismay over the unpleasant ending to the evening which upset me most. I was thirty-six, and apart from ten months with Filbert I had been alone for the past decade, give or take a drunken tussle or two. Another five years of this and I knew that I would be destined not to share my life with anyone.

The wind tugged at my hair as I drove rapidly along the sweeping roads. There was no traffic to speak of and the car was humming sweetly. Small pockets of fog had formed as the sun rose, and I drove through them as an airship flies through cloud. My foot rolled off the throttle as I entered the small parcels of gloom, then gently pressed down again as I burst free into the morning sun once more.