‘Oh.’ Gavriela blinked, feeling black pressure over one eye. ‘It’s the headaches and the, um, the dreams. Lucas hasn’t . . . We’re just acquaintances, really.’

Her friends looked at each other.

Then Inge said: ‘There’s a family friend visiting from Vienna, and he’s rather famous. Do you really have bad dreams that upset you, dearest Gavi?’

‘Just . . . recently.’

Gavriela’s right hand, still holding her cards, began to tremble. It was awful, because she could not control the motion. So she put down the cards and placed both hands in her lap, squeezing them together, using pain to fight back the shaking.

‘You’re very pale,’ said Petra.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You need to see him, the Herr Doktor.’ Inge touched Gavriela’s upper arm. ‘My family has a good relationship with him. Some of his ideas are deliciously racy, but—Never mind. My mother will make the arrangements.’

‘No, sorry. I can’t afford—’

‘Excuse me, but I said my family will arrange everything. There will be no charge.’

Gavriela swallowed salt tears.

‘Thank you.’

She needed help. Suddenly it was obvious.

‘Thanks . . .’

Then she was crying, and the worst part of it was, she had no idea exactly why.

Two days later, she knocked on a front door, and a short maid opened it.

‘Good morning,’ said the maid. ‘Are you Fräulein Wolf, please?’

‘Um, yes. Your employer’s daughter, Inge Scholl, arranged for—’

‘So, please come in. Herr Doktor Freud is expecting you.’

The maid showed her to a small drawing-room, the cupboards decorated with Delft plates and jugs. There were two high-backed armchairs, one of them occupied. The man rose, and shook her hand, sniffing a little.

‘You must be Fräulein Wolf?’

The voice was higher than expected, and his eyes were bright with energy.

‘Yes, and I’m pleased to meet you, Herr Doktor.’

Several minutes later, they were seated - he at a reassuring angle, rather than facing her straight on - and she was telling him about the shards of remembered dreams.

Then she paused.

‘Transparent people?’ Doktor Freud prompted.

‘I know it sounds crazy, wide awake in the everyday world. It’s as if the dreams are trying to break through. And there’s pain inside my head.’

‘Such small derangements, or neuroses as I prefer to call them, are perfectly common, dear Fräulein. I notice you’ve not mentioned your father.’

‘Papa? No, he’s got nothing to do with it. There’s a crystalline woman, a stranger whose name I almost know, and sometimes hints of a young man . . . No. I just don’t know.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Sorry.’

After a few silent moments, Doktor Freud nodded.

‘With your permission, it is time to try something different. Just one moment.’ He stood and crossed to the drapes, then pulled them closed, leaving a slit of daylight. ‘Yes, this will do nicely.’

There was a glass paperweight on a shelf, and he manoeuvred it until it sparkled, catching the sunlight.

‘Now focus only on the brightness, that’s right, Fräulein, and now your vision begins to defocus as you relax, so deeply relaxing now’ - at some point his voice had slowed to an odd cadence, rising and falling in unusual ways, like waves - ‘as you go deeper and deeper inside your unconscious mind, where you can tell me clearly what you see.’

The room looked odd as her eyelids flickered, then she was in a dreamlike state, understanding she could move if she wanted to, yet feeling so odd, with no desire to do anything but remain like this, in a stillness beyond sleep.

A hand - the Herr Doktor’s - took her wrist and raised it, then let go. Her arm remained suspended, catatonic with no sensation of gravity.

‘And the part of you controlling dreams,’ came his odd voice, ‘as I address you now, the Id, can relate in every detail what you see.’

‘Yes . . .’ came a tiny voice from Gavriela’s mouth.

‘As you agree to do that now.’

She sank inside her dream.

There is a leafy avenue. A young man escorts her - his suit has oddly wide lapels, and his tie is a long strip, not a bow - and then he stops, removing his hat.

‘There they are, ma’am. You want I should introduce you?’

The language is . . . for a moment, she’s not sure. It’s her second tongue, that’s all she knows. Her escort is indicating two gentlemen farther along the sidewalk, strolling this way.

‘No need, thank you. The professor and I are old friends.’

‘You know Professor Einstein?’

The young man’s voice is hushed.

‘Why else would they have asked you to take me here?’

‘I thought—’

‘I’m not familiar with Princeton, that’s all.’

‘Then, um . . . Do you want me to wait for you?’

‘You’ve been kind, but there’s no need.’

‘Um . . . Okay.’

After a trembling moment, the young man - with an awed glance back at the approaching figures - is on his way.

Overhead is a plane. Automobiles are parked along the street, bulbous and closed in, their design strange; and yet she accepts it all.

‘Gavi.’ Professor Einstein’s moustache is greyer than before, but his eyes still sparkle.

She trembles as she kisses his cheek.

‘Kurt,’ continues Einstein, ‘allow me to make introductions. Herr Professor Gödel, meet Fräulein Doktor Wolf.’

Of course they are speaking German now, so comforting.

‘We’re discussing the existence or otherwise of time,’ adds Einstein.

‘In the context of entropy?’ asks Gavriela.

Gödel raises his eyebrows; Einstein grins.

‘A lifeline,’ says Gödel, ‘is a fixed geodesic in a four-dimensioned continuum.’

‘There are six million murdered Jews,’ she says, ‘that you can’t have a conversation with now.’

Einstein half-smiles, as if he expected this.

‘I beg your pardon,’ Gavriela adds. ‘I feel so stuck in the past at times.’

Gödel opens his mouth to speak, but the world is spinning away, is gone.

In the gloom, Herr Doktor Freud leaned closer.

‘Back into the dream, that’s right, as you go back—’

‘I don’t . . .’

‘—more deeply now.’

The wheelchair responds to a tiny gesture of her fingertip. It’s just as well, for she’s capable of little else. Whining softly, the motor engages and carries her closer to the desktop, then stops.

Her skin is old and blotched with brown, her hands fragile memories of youth.

‘Tell me,’ she whispers.

‘Sure, Gran. See here?’ The bearded man is pointing at a glass pane containing a picture, like a cinema screen, but the glowing picture is in focused colour. ‘There’s the event.’

Three scarlet dots shine in a starfield.

‘Finally,’ she whispers.

‘What do you mean, finally?’ asks the young man.

‘Never mind.’

Beneath the screen, a simple folded card bears the label: Property of Project HEIMDALL. Please leave running.

‘No.’ This is a woman’s voice from behind her, not friendly. ‘I’d like to know. What did you mean by that, Dr Wolf?’

Gavriela causes her wheelchair to rotate on the spot.

Surrounding the young woman are flickers of darkness, and her eyes are hard.

‘I’ve led a long life,’ says Gavriela.

Turning away from the inevitable has never been her style.