I wake to find myself stretched out on a soft bed, completely naked. My arms are by my sides, and feel so heavy I can scarcely move them. When I try to lift my head from the pillow, the room spins so fast that the bile rises in my throat and I have to spit it onto my chest to prevent myself from throwing up.

Whatever Gillian Dixon put in that tea, it’s rendered me as feeble and defenceless as her daughter’s baby.

His grandmother doesn’t usually look like this, that’s the problem.

More brutal than the memory of some unspeakable act of violence, the picture of Gillian’s bald, jewel-crested head crashes into my mind, takes up residence there and refuses to leave.

When did she become a kuzkardesh gara? Who infected her, and where are they now? And what were the MoD doing while this was happening?

Pissing about forging wills and breaking into dead people’s houses to leave caskets behind, that’s what.

Fucking idiots.

But I can’t afford to let my temper get the better of me. Just as I did at Hayden Park, I force my mind to concentrate on making a thorough assessment of my immediate surroundings.

The room is smaller than the one I occupy at the Gladstone, roughly fifteen feet by ten. The door is in the left-hand corner as I look, and stands slightly ajar. Either I’m free to wander around as I please, or Gillian doesn’t expect me to be in any condition to make a run for it.

Trisha certainly isn’t, drugged or not.

Where is she? Christ, I hope she managed to get away.

Wait a minute, how did Gillian get me up here? I’m not the most sylphlike of girls; brawny as she is, it would have taken her five or ten minutes to drag me upstairs, and Trisha had only gone out to the car. Surely she’d have caught the bald-headed cow in the act…

Unless it was no coincidence that she left when the tea was about to be served.

Or that Gillian just happened to be wearing a wig when we arrived.

You’re being paranoid, babe. The very idea that Trisha lured you here under false pretences is too ludicrous for words.

Yet she’s got the same hairstyle as Gillian, brushed forward to hide her forehead…

Men have such a high opinion of themselves, don’t you think so?

And she wouldn’t tell me her boyfriend’s name…

They don’t realise that all they’ve ever been good for is to put food on the table and keep us warm at night.

Didn’t Susan Dwyer say something like that?

They are necessary to perpetuate our species, and to provide for us when we’re carrying and raising our children. In return we pleasure them, in ways most have never dreamed of.

The evidence is mounting up. It points towards only one conclusion: Trisha Hodgson, the girl I once loved more than life itself, is now a member of the same bizarre religious cult that Helen Sutton joined shortly before she died.

As nightmares go, that doesn’t so much as take the biscuit as run away with the whole barrel.

How could I have been so stupid? I knew there was something amiss as soon as she showed me Donna and Louise’s address. And yet I still barged headlong into what I ought to have realised was a set-up.

Not only that, but she managed to fool me into thinking there was nothing the matter with her.

No blame attached to you there, babe. It was one hell of an effective disguise.

Maybe, but that’s small comfort.

How many more of these women are walking unseen among us? How bad has the situation become?

If this menace gains control then that’s it. Full stop. Period. Punkt. Bye-bye progress, bye-bye creativity, bye-bye all the things that make us human. For ever.

After a few false starts I raise my hand far enough to check that I’ve still got my hair. The feel of it beneath my fingers — and what a blessed relief that is! — provides me with the impetus I need to drag myself to a kneeling position so I can look through the window to the right of the bed. The view is restricted by the sides of the hollow in which the house is set, but allows me a glimpse of the wooded hills on the south-western side of the valley. From the altitude of the sun I can tell that it’s quite late in the afternoon.

Trisha can’t have gone for help. It would have arrived long before now.

The woman in that room. She’s not my mother.

You stupid little tart! Why couldn’t you have left things alone?

I swing my legs round and instantly wish I hadn’t, for the nausea that sweeps through my system has me sitting with my head bent forward and dribbling like a senile old woman. It’s several minutes before I recover sufficiently to take note of the pinewood wardrobe and matching chest of drawers facing the window, or the dressing table to the right of the door whose surface is filled with bottles and jars disturbingly similar to those Kerrie Latimer and I came across in 6 Redheugh Close — as well as a stand holding a wig identical to the one Gillian Dixon wore.

The reason for my being here couldn’t be more plain.

If I didn’t feel so sick I’d laugh until I needed a hip replacing. Who do they think they’re dealing with? As soon as I can stand without the world turning somersaults around me I’m going to find that teapot and ram the snout so far up Gillian Dixon’s vagina I’ll be able to hang my coat on the back of her neck.

None of my clothes are anywhere to be seen, so I risk crawling across to the chest of drawers in the hope that it’ll contain something to cover my nakedness. A pair of black lace panties partly fulfils my requirements, but there isn’t a bra to be found — and the rest of the lingerie consists exclusively of suspender belts and pairs of seamed stockings.

Fine for the first time I sneak down to Simon’s room.

Not a great deal of use to me this afternoon.

When I open the wardrobe, it comes as no surprise to learn that the rails are hung with sleeveless black dresses. Yet when I pull one of them out I notice it lacks the diaphanous bodice that characterised the garments we found in the casket. Instead there’s a large heart-shaped hole cut into the material just below the collar, the edges machine-stitched and clearly not to factory standards.

Then I see the label attached to the inside.

“Marks and Spencer’s?” I gasp. “Marks and bloody Spencer’s?”

The others all carry the same tag. They’re common or garden retro ‘50s frocks that have been altered solely for the purpose of showing off the wearer’s breasts.

And this is a religious movement? What’s their holy book, Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying?

I sit at the dressing table and go through the various compartments, bringing out an assortment of necklaces, rings and loose stones that appear to be made of nothing more precious than coloured glass. Thankfully I don’t see any spiked leather chokers, dog leads, whips or sets of handcuffs…though it’s early days, I suppose.

The door creaks open. My head snaps round, and I almost pass out at the sight of two living, breathing kuzkardesh gara.

They move into the sunlight, which glints off the black gemstones set in their shaven scalps and brows, as well as those dangling from their ears, strung along the chains hanging almost to their waists, and mounted upon the silver rings adorning their fingers and thumbs. It shines equally brightly upon the ebony paint covering their lips, their nails and even their nipples.

Gillian — I can only distinguish her from the other because she’s the stockier of the pair — reaches out to stroke her companion’s cheek. The gesture is reciprocated with what I have to admit is genuine tenderness.

But any chance that my hostility towards the pair might weaken is removed when two smaller, much younger converts appear behind them — one of whom is rocking a baby in her arms.

A teenage girl, for heaven’s sake.

A teenage mother!

Now I’m really angry. I want to know who’s responsible for this. I want them punished and I want them shamed.

And if the MoD try to keep it quiet I’ll blow the whistle on the whole fucking lot of them.

A figure has appeared on the landing.

Trisha! And she’s fully clothed!

I have the presence of mind to yank the counterpane from the bed and drape it around my shoulders before barging past the inhuman creatures blocking my path.

“Quick! We’ve got to get out of here!” I yell, grabbing her hand.

She doesn’t move.

“I can’t take you back with me,” she says quietly. “Not after everything you’ve done. They told me what happened on the night dad died. You were trying to blackmail Miss Sutton into changing the will. That’s why she ran down to the breakwater, to get away from you.”

I stagger away from her, unable to believe what I’m hearing.

“I don’t know who you’ve been talking to,” I pant, “but they were lying.”

“Were they? I’ve seen one of the letters you wrote to her. And I know all about the casket, and the reason you sent it. Personally I think you’re getting off lightly. But at least this way the punishment fits the crime. Enjoy life as a kuzkardesh gara, Ruth.”

Her words slice my guts wide open. I slide to the floor and sit there with my head in my hands.

The reason I came to see you, Ruth, is to inform you that we’re taking you off this case with immediate effect.

You bastards.

I’ve outlived my usefulness, and now you’ve found the perfect means of erasing me from the picture.

I will never forgive you for this.

Never.

When I finally lower my arms, Trisha has gone. I look up to see four sets of ebony lips curl in identical malignant smiles.

“Welcome to your new home, Ruth Pattison,” the kuzkardesh gara chant in unison. “Welcome to the Sunny Hollow hive.”

The bathroom at Sunny Hollow is a modern extension, built into the back yard from the bottom of the staircase. The tub takes up the whole of the left-hand wall, and leaves only enough floor space for a lavatory and a washbasin. Above the latter is a cabinet fronted by an oval mirror; inside I discover a rack containing five toothbrushes, one of which is still in its packaging, and shelves filled with such commonplace items as antiseptic creams, headache tablets, vitamin pills, sanitary towels and mouthwash.

All of them will have cost money.

Village stores don’t give away bags of groceries and other provisions. Electricity accounts aren’t famous for settling themselves.

Someone is financing this enterprise.

And I have a good idea who.

The door opens — the bolt has been taken out of the lock — to admit Gillian.

“There is so much we have to tell you, Ruth Pattison,” she says mellifluously.

“Fate has brought you to us for a very special reason,” adds Louise, materialising at her side and touching a bejewelled, black-nailed finger to her mother’s upper arm.

I don’t reply straight away. Instead I battle back my rage so I can figure out what it is about their faces that strikes me as off beam.

That’s it!

They don’t have those intricate patterns of dots going back from the corners of their eyes I remember from the photgraph of Sarah-Jane Collingwood.

Why not? Is it possible that their commitment to the cause isn’t all it might be?

Hair grows back. Nail varnish, lip gloss and costume jewellery can be removed. Tattoos are a different kettle of fish entirely.

Are they merely trying this out, in the same way that impressionable youngsters sometimes become animal rights activists or join groups of squatters? I could believe that of Louise and Donna, but their mothers? How could two mature women allow themselves to be taken in by this rubbish?

The pair turn from me and begin communicating in a private language of clicks, whirrs and sibilant whispers. More unsettling than the sounds themselves is the sight of their eyes glazing over when they make them, as if they’re robots whose power packs have run out of juice. They remind me of how Susan Dwyer’s face changed when she told me humanity was doomed.

The genie is out of the bottle, and no one is going to put it back.

You don’t know us, you ugly half-human bitch.

Once again I make an effort to stop my temper from boiling over. I’ve got to play this very carefully indeed. Whatever I do, I mustn’t give them an excuse to drug me again. Gillian and Donna’s mother — did she say her name was Hilary? — both have an advantage over me as regards height and weight; I’m confident I can outwit them, but only if I stay fit and alert.

I’m more concerned about what might happen after I’ve escaped. Trisha’s bound to have concocted some cock and bull story she’ll use to explain my absence. I only hope in the light of what she said earlier it doesn’t prove too damaging.

“So what happens now?” I ask the insectile duo, as much to interrupt their hissing and chirruping as anything else.

“You should get dressed,” answers Gillian, gesturing upstairs with her fake oriental eyes.

“What, go around in that clobber you left in the wardrobe for me? I think I’ll have my own clothes back, if it’s all the same to you.”

“That is out of the question.”

I take a step towards her.

“You don’t fool me, darling. You’re playing at this, aren’t you? I’ve seen a photo of the real thing. You’re just an imitation, and not a particularly good one either.”

“The replication process is never absolutely faithful,” she smiles. “If it were, the meme would have no opportunity to evolve. However, your invective explains your initial response to our appearance, which was one of repugnance rather than surprise. Aware of what we are, you feign a sense of outrage in order to disguise your true intentions, which are to pretend to go along with us until you have succeeded in getting us to let down our guard enough for you to attempt to leave. That we cannot permit.”

“I’m a prisoner, then? Says a lot for your ‘hive’ and its beliefs if it can only make new converts by holding them captive. How many of you termites are there, by the way?”

“There are enough of us to serve the purposes of the universal female mind,” answers Louise.

“You mean it’s just the four of you? Really?”

“We set an example for others to follow,” declares Gillian. “They will come to us when they are ready. As will you.”

I push my bare breasts right into her chest. To her credit, she doesn’t flinch.

“I’m not sure what you think you hope to achieve, but you’ve picked the wrong babe to fuck about with.” I exert even more pressure. “Why are you so keen on keeping me here, anyway? What’s so special about me?”

“That will become clear to you soon enough,” Louise puts in.

“You have a destiny to fulfil, Ruth Pattison,” says her mother, her face so close I can feel her breath against my cheek. “The enemy have unwittingly presented us with what we are now certain will be our most powerful weapon.”

I narrow my eyes.

“What are you talking about?”

“You must dress,” insists Louise.

I open my mouth to protest, but realise there’s little to be gained by arguing with her. Besides, if I make a break for it I won’t get very far in just a pair of knickers.

Donna is standing outside the door to my room, like some hideous parody of a serving girl. She invites me to sit on the bed while she puts together my outfit.

“You’re wasting your time,” I tell her as she lifts my left foot and slides it inside the first of the stockings she’s selected for me. “I won’t weaken.”

“We do not anticipate that you will,” she says enigmatically.

I’m left to fasten the suspenders myself. It takes me a minute or two — there’s a knack to it, and my fingers don’t seem to ‘remember’ it all that well. Yet although I’d probably have changed from tights to stockings as soon as I started wearing ‘50s clothes on a regular basis, it still feels like putting on the opposition’s colours.

That impression is strengthened when I step into the dress Donna holds out for me. The one consolation comes when I gaze down at my naked breasts and realise I couldn’t have two more prominent reminders of the need to fight for my freedom.

“Satisfied?” I grumble as I bend down to slip on the black high-heeled shoes the kuzkardesh gara has picked from the dozen or so pairs I saw at the bottom of the wardrobe. “Tell me, where did you witches get the idea that you’ve got to go around with your tits hanging out? Did our Chrysanthemum moonlight as a stripper before she caught the anthropology bug?”

“Frau von Witzleben was a great admirer of Minoan culture,” answers Donna.

“Ancient Crete, eh? Good job she wasn’t interested in pre-colonial Africa, or you’d all have bones stuck through your noses.”

Not a flicker.

No sense of humour, then. That figures.

Bye-bye progress, bye-bye creativity, bye-bye all the things that make us human.

Donna adjusts my collar — as if anyone’s going to notice it with what I’m advertising on the shelf below. Her mouth shapes itself into a rictus of distaste when her hand comes into contact with my hair.

It serves no purpose other than to feed the chimera of selfhood.

My eyes are drawn to her scalp. There isn’t the slightest trace of stubble. It’s as shiny and smooth as I’d expect it to be if her head had been shaved only a few minutes ago.

That could be you, babe, if you allow this mental virus to worm its way inside your mind.

I’ll throw myself off Blackpool Tower first.

“We should join the others,” says Donna. “The evening meal is ready.”

I follow her downstairs, the sight of my breasts bouncing and swinging only adding to the sense of betrayal raging within me.

But they’ve forgotten one thing: I’ve put in too much hard work becoming Ruth to allow myself to be walled up in a place like this.

I’m getting out of here.

And when I do, Sunny Hollow is going to be on the front page of every newspaper in the country.

Hilary Parker inclines her head and hisses three guttural syllables into her daughter’s face. In reply she receives a single click of the tongue; the sound is clearly meant to indicate agreement, as both immediately rise from the table and begin piling together the plates, bowls and spoons they set out earlier for their so-called meal.

I watch the kuzkardesh gara carry them from the dining room, resolved not to let my gaze fall upon the sinister crests of black gemstones that seemed to pulse and vibrate in the artificial light as they fed.

If only it were as easy to ignore the fact that the MoD, in their infinite wisdom, have set up an experimental hive in the middle of North Yorkshire.

“They want to know how fast a collective mind grows, whether the expansion is regular or exponential, and what effect its presence has on the local community,” Louise told me before she left the table to see to her baby. “As long as we refrain from drawing too much attention to our activities they have promised to leave us alone.”

They’re lab rats.

And I’ve just been dropped into the cage.

“You have not eaten very much,” frowns Gillian, gesturing with beringed, black-nailed hands at the plate containing the flavourless lentil-based mush I toyed with for all of thirty seconds before I pushed it away in disgust.

“Arrange the following appetite suppressants in order of effectiveness: drugged; being held here against my will; having my clothes confiscated; listening to you lot jabber on like overgrown cockroaches…oh, and being served something that looks like it came out the backside of one of those cows down by the beck.”

“This is all for your own good, Ruth Pattison. You will thank us for it when you come to recognise the illusory nature of the individual self.”

“I’ll decide what’s good for me, thank you very much. Now I haven’t had a cigarette since a quarter to eleven, so unless you fancy me showing you just what a bad-tempered bitch I can be when I’m deprived of my nicotine fix I suggest you hurry along and fetch me my bag.”

“We do not smoke,” she says coldly.

“Well I do, and I’m gasping. Don’t worry, I’ll go outside. You won’t have to breathe any of it in.”

“The hive requires you to abstain from stimulants of any kind.”

“Then the hive can piss off.”

The kuzkardesh gara touches a finger to the black gemstone set in the centre of her forehead.

“Are you not curious as to how Gillian Dixon came to discard the illusion of selfhood?”

“What d’you mean? You’re Gillian, aren’t you?”

“The organism with whom you are conversing uses that name, yes. She is not an individual, however, but an avatar — a vehicle if you will for a single intelligence that simultaneously inhabits this body and those of the other members of our hive.”

“Don’t be stupid. You’ve fallen for some kind of pseudo-religious gobbledegook, that’s all.”

Her jewelled brows lift.

“In spite of her intrinsic human failings, Gillian Dixon was no fool. She knew at once that the phenomenon we refer to as the universal female mind is real, and so did you.”

A single appearance, a single set of opinions, a single purpose.

“Okay, let’s say I accept that there’s something in what you say. Now explain why you need all those silly noises to communicate.”

“You fail to understand, Ruth Pattison. We possess no telepathic abilities. An avatar has her own set of sensory inputs; everything she sees, hears, smells, tastes and touches is unique to her. How could she function otherwise?”

“So you need a way of giving each other factual information, like if the milk has gone sour or a light bulb needs changing. I get that. But what’s with all the clicks and whirrs?”

“They represent syllables culled from a language called Ugur.”

“Ugur? Let me guess, that’s what they speak in Bucovina, right?”

“It originated in Central Asia. Our version was devised by Chrysanthemum von Witzleben, who as you are aware was the founder of the very first hive. It permits us to form expressions that impart the maximum amount of data in the shortest possible time.”

“And you picked it up just like that?”

“Gillian Dixon became proficient in Ugur within three days of her arrival. That is how she knew the incubation process was complete.”

“Your arrival? Weren’t you infected by your daughter?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Louise saw Helen Sutton’s body on the beach. I assumed that’s how the meme got into her brain.”

Gillian shakes her head.

“Helen is the reason we’re here, that is true. But a corpse cannot make converts. Our assimilation into the universal female mind was facilitated by your species.”

I feel the blood drain from my face.

They’re lying about this.

They have to be.

“We were removed from our homes the following night,” Gillian goes on. “Our daughters had seen too much, and had talked to too many of their friends.”

“Where did they take you?” I ask in as steady a voice as I can manage.

“To another country, where we stayed at the home of a kuzkardesh gara named Sorina Dascalu and her three children. Sorina was of English birth, and could therefore–“

“What was she called before her conversion?”

“Sarah-Jane Collingwood.”

I close my eyes and swear under my breath.

They were taken to Bucovina and deliberately exposed to the meme. No wonder Yvette de Monnier struck out on her own. The MoD are doing the cult’s work for them.

Gillian leans closer.

“Choose the right side, Ruth Pattison,” she says softly. “Choose us. Because we are going to win.”

And they are.

For the simple reason that humanity is its own worst enemy.

Our race is doomed by its very nature.

But I won’t become one of these creatures. I’ll slice off my own tits before I let that happen.

“I’m going for some fresh air,” I tell Gillian. “There’s no rule against that, is there?”

Apparently not. She even points me toward the vestibule, where I find a row of pegs upon each of which are hung thin linen jackets — black, of course, to match the regulation dresses. To my relief they all have three hooks at the front, so I can enjoy the luxury of covering my nipples.

Outside, the temperature is rapidly falling. I keep to the paved area near the front door, fearful of twisting an ankle if I stray onto the grass in these heels. After a minute or so the sound of a motor engine drifts from the top of the valley. Someone is heading for an evening at one of the village pubs, or perhaps a chat and a few games of cards at a friend’s, heedless of the peril lurking in the house they’re shortly to pass.

Long may their happy ignorance continue.

Hilary’s voice brings this all too brief spell of solitude to an end.

“It is cold, Ruth Pattison. You should come inside.”

“I’ll be okay,” I assure her, though the jacket wasn’t designed to keep out the chill of a cloudless northern night.

“You need sleep.”

“Yeah, I expect I’ll nod off the second my head touches the pillow.”

I feel her take my arm. I make as if to shrug it away, but her touch is inexplicably comforting.

“We know you are anxious. That is only natural. But the transition is a gradual one. It is not a case of one minute you think you are an individual and the next you do not. The illusion of selfhood does not suddenly disappear. What cease to exist are the mental barriers that prevent you from seeing it for what it is.”

There was no ‘decision’, Ruth. It doesn’t work like that. You don’t go through an epiphany when you lose your individual awareness. It still feels like being you. What’s changed is that your emotional and psychological responses are now identical to those of every other kuzkardesh gara.

“They just pop out of existence, do they?”

“You ought not to make the mistake of thinking there is no scientific basis for any of this.” She reaches into her own jacket and presses a slim paperback into my hand. “Open your mind, Ruth Pattison. If not to us, then to the message in here.”

“I was wondering when we’d get to your sacred texts.”

“It is the truth. Of course it is sacred.”

She walks back to the house. I follow her as far as the door, where there’s enough light for me to peer at the book’s cover. Although the title and author are unfamiliar to me, the publishing company definitely isn’t.

The Oxford University Press? Why are they encouraging this? Come to think of it, why are they being allowed to?

I take the volume up to my room, guessing I won’t be disturbed until I’ve had time to discover this ‘message’ for myself. But before I begin reading, my thoughts return to the tale I was told earlier. The details are unimportant; what matters is that the MoD set up the Sunny Hollow hive with so few restraints on its members’ movement. If they don’t feel threatened by these women, nor should I.

Kicking off my shoes, I hitch up my hem so I can unclip the tops of my stockings, then reconsider. I need to become thoroughly accustomed to these clothes if I’m to feel comfortable in them when I eventually make my escape. I lie back on the bed, raise my knees and let the wide folds of my dress fall where they will.

I open A New Approach to Cultural Evolution with a sense of purpose I didn’t have a few minutes ago. ‘Know your enemy,’ said Sun Tzu in The Art of War. It’s a piece of advice I fully intend to follow.

I haven’t finished the first chapter before I understand why the kuzkardesh gara set such store by this work.

Memes, they’re called, self-replicating units of information that copy themselves and jump from person to person.

Egerton could have been reading directly from the page now in front of me.

Memes.

Viruses of the mind that spread from one brain to another, parasitising the host and turning it into an instrument for the meme’s propagation. Agents of cultural transmission, passed on because of the brain’s predilection for unconscious imitation — a survival mechanism as old as humanity.

If you see a group of people running in a certain direction, the instinct is to join them because they’re almost certain to be fleeing from danger. On the African savannah that probably meant a large predator; those who lacked that automatic response were more likely to be eaten, and consequently fewer of them lived long enough to mate and have children. Natural selection, in the form of fierce, hungry carnivores, has made us intensely susceptible to the replicators that today bombard us from magazines, newspapers, cinema screens, radios and television sets. We can’t stop humming that tune. We’ve simply got to tell that joke. We don’t mean to start talking like the guys on that American cop show, it just slips out.

But memes alone can’t explain why Donna Parker and Louise Dixon, let alone their mothers, chose to follow Sarah-Jane Collingwood’s example and become kuzkardesh gara. There has to be something more going on. Teenage girls tend to copy models, actresses and pop singers, not thirty-four year old mothers of three who go about bald and bare-breasted.

What advantages does the subconscious see in that look? Why is it willing to copy something so utterly abnormal?

I toss the paperback to the floor and swing my legs after it. I reckon it’s well after midnight, and if I don’t at least try to get some sleep I’ll be in no fit state to resist whatever it was that turned Gillian, Hilary and their daughters into the abominations they are today.

I’ve just finished unzipping my dress when I notice a scrap of paper that must have fallen out of the book after I threw it down. I lean forward to lift it from the carpet, frowning as I look at the phrase written on it in a hand eerily reminiscent of Helen Sutton’s.

Siz okde

Now where have I heard those words before?

Okde…

I know what it means. I’m convinced of it.

More unnerving than a déja vu that refuses to fade, more annoying than a fragment of a song whose title just won’t come to mind, those alien syllables resound through my consciousness as I slide into bed and turn off the light.

It means…

It means…

Christ, it’s on the tip of my tongue!

She says I’m gifted.

Gifted. That’s it!

As in talented.

And siz?

Fate has brought you to us for a very special reason.

‘You are gifted.’

That’s the message Hilary was referring to.

And my gift is so important to these women that they’ll do everything in their power to turn me into one of their kind.

I’m going to make sure they have a bloody long wait.