The dream hasn’t changed.

The same overcast sky, the same line of cars outside the cemetery gates, the same tarpaulin draped over the earth heaped next to the grave, the same voices murmuring as she leans forward to place a single daffodil on top of the coffin about to be lowered into the ground.

I reckon she’ll do the right thing.

Aye, she’s thirty-four now. She’s done her gallivantin’.

A few more years an’ Norah’ll let ‘er run the place ‘erself.

The dream hasn’t changed. Everything else has.

Sylvia Russell opens the door to her mother’s room, holding her nose at the stench coming from the old woman’s bed. She doesn’t mind that so much; what she hates is seeing her in this pitiful condition when just a week ago she’d seemed as strong as an ox.

She heaves Norah onto her side so she can whip the urine-soaked sheet from beneath her. The groans and muffled complaints this brings are interspersed with pleas to fetch Dr Pounder.

“I told you, mam, it’s Dr Vasey now,” Sylvia reminds her.

“Don’t want ‘im.”

“Well you’ve got him, so there’s no point going on about it.”

It’s angina, Miss Russell. I’m afraid not enough blood is getting to her heart.

Dr Vasey is quite young, but he clearly knows his stuff. Ruth had done well to recommend him, just as she’d spotted that the medical encyclopaedia Sylvia had consulted when mam started having those headaches, and afterwards the drowsy spells, the times when she couldn’t recall her own name, and worst of all the chronic diarrhoea, was leading her down the wrong track.

She feels foolish now to have even given the idea houseroom, but those symptoms had accurately described the early stages of arsenic poisoning.

Her mother’s immediate needs attended to, Sylvia hurries through her morning routine with breathless efficiency. There is much to be done: Ruth and her guests need feeding, their rooms must be serviced and their uniforms pressed before she can start dusting and vacuuming downstairs. She also has to prepare the accounts so that Ruth can inspect them tomorrow, and type new menus in line with Ruth’s specifications.

She dresses swiftly, pulling on a sleeveless white blouse, a full black skirt and a pair of black low-heeled shoes. She sprays her curls stiff, then leaves the flat and climbs the stairs to the single room on the top floor. She knocks once and waits for the guttural syllable she knows will give her permission to enter.

Ruth is at her dressing table in her panties and stockings, making up her eyes. Sylvia lowers her head, grateful for the etiquette that saves her from having to look at that pale, freckled scalp and the repulsive row of black gemstones that bisect it. If she tries hard, she can still picture the tousled gingery blonde hair that used to hang to Ruth’s shoulders, still hear the educated southern accent that so often reminded Sylvia of the years she spent in London.

“Salam, Sylvia Russell,” Ruth says at length, though she continues to paint her face.

“Salam, saylanan.”

“This morning you will accompany the avatar known as Gemma Egerton to the house at 6 Redheugh Close. It is to be made ready for the visitors we expect to entertain following this evening’s meeting.”

“As you wish, saylanan.”

“Hyzmatkar?”

The man Ruth is addressing lies naked on the bed, the sheets barely hiding his genitals. Sylvia doesn’t remember seeing him before, though his physique is such that she can understand why the saylanan has taken him as her lover.

“Any chance of a bite up here, Sylv?” he asks her.

“Of course, Mr…?”

“Cunningham. You can call me Toby.”

Ruth stands from the chair. Sylvia notices that she’s gone back to wearing black lip gloss and nail varnish. Memories of her unannounced return to the Gladstone just over a week ago, flanked by Gemma Egerton and Carol Vasey’s youngest, threaten to converge into a coherent narrative but never quite do.

Who’ve you been staying with, the Addams family?

That’s where you’re mistaken, Sylvia Russell. The decision is not up to you.

There are some who have reached an age when the illusion of selfhood is too deeply embedded for the meme to overwrite it.

Ruth walks over to the bed. An image forms in Sylvia’s mind of the Soho ‘massage parlour’ she was once taken to, and the leather-clad dominatrix she’d glimpsed in one of the rooms there.

At least she’d had her hair.

“I don’t suppose…” Toby begins.

“Three times during the night, first thing this morning and you’re still not satisfied,” sighs Ruth.

“You promised me a kuzkardesh gara never refuses her hyzmatkar.”

“Of course she doesn’t. She is his woman.”

Before Ruth waves a bejewelled finger to dismiss her, Sylvia is compelled to watch her lick Toby’s penis erect and then take the engorged member fully into her mouth. If Sylvia’s concerns regarding her mother’s health have subdued her appetite, this removes it altogether.

Nor does she feel like eating once she’s finished serving breakfast. The days of bacon, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms and black pudding sizzling in the pan are past. Now it’s cereal and warm milk for the kuzkardesh gara, toast and preserves for their hytzmakar.

Such a transformation in only a week.

Mam would never have stood for it. She’d have got the women of the headland together and had Ruth tin-panned back to Yorkshire.

Sylvia waits until Gemma and Simon have left the dining room before setting the tables for this afternoon’s pre-meeting tea. She’s laying out the cutlery when Gemma returns, carrying a black jacket over her arm.

“This avatar will be leaving for Redheugh Close in approximately forty-five minutes,” she tells her. “See to it that this garment is fit for her to wear.”

“At once, madam.”

Sylvia takes the jacket, frowning as the woman walks back into the foyer. She’s come to regard Gemma almost as a friend, despite her airs and graces. The person who’s just spoken to her was different, not only in her attitude but her general deportment as well. And she’d referred to herself as ‘this avatar’, which was also new.

But it isn’t Sylvia’s place to question the behaviour of those much more vital to the saylanan’s cause than a hotel drudge. She drapes the jacket over the back of a chair and sets off in search of a soft brush, a clean tea towel and a steam iron, reckoning that the table in the outhouse, which she scrubbed laboratory clean yesterday, will make an ideal work surface. First she remembers to check the pockets.

What on earth…?

A polythene bag with a renewable seal. Inside, a silvery egg-shaped object five or six inches long and perhaps three inches across at its widest.

She pulls open the seal and lifts the ovoid out. It’s as light as balsa wood and yet as hard and inflexible as steel.

Cold too. Icy cold.

She drops it back in the bag, rubbing fingers that feel as if she’s used them to build a snowman without bothering to put on any gloves.

When the warmth has seeped back into them, she looks at the object once again. Perhaps it’s just that the light has improved, but the thing seems to be glowing.

Ought she to tell the saylanan? Gemma had been acting strangely, after all.

Yet if she’s hiding this from Ruth, she’s hardly likely to have left in her pocket for an underling like Sylvia Russell to find.

Underling?

It’s your mother’s hotel!

No, she’s got to say something. This is a special day for the saylanan. Imagine if Gemma’s merely pretending to be under her control, and this is a weapon of some kind. For all Sylvia knows it could explode or shoot out vicious poison-tipped spikes or burst open and bathe its victim in acid.

Poison…

She’s made up her mind. She’ll lock the object away so that Gemma can’t find it, then pick her moment to approach Ruth.

In the meantime, she has a jacket to iron.

Elsie Harbron’s curtains are drawn, and at half-past eleven on a bright Sunday morning.

“I hope she’s all right,” Sylvia says to Gemma as they reach the house at the end of Redheugh Close.

“She is old, Sylvia Russell. The future has no need of her.”

It wouldn’t miss Sylvia’s mother either. But that didn’t mean she deserved to die in her own excreta.

Gemma detaches her fingers from Sylvia’s arm. The door to number 6 is ajar; she walks straight in, to be greeted by a pregnant young woman with bobbed red hair who Sylvia recognises as Alice Hodgson.

“We bring specific instructions from the saylanan,” Gemma informs her. “This avatar’s hyzmatkar will arrive shortly with the equipment necessary to carry them out.”

Alice nods, then glances at Sylvia.

“This is the maid?”

“Sylvia Russell is at our disposal until three.”

“Then she can begin by cleaning the house from top to bottom.”

For the next couple of hours Sylvia’s world is one of mop and bucket, of feather duster and chamois leather, of disinfectant and furniture polish, of Hoover extensions and refuse sacks. She is allowed two short breaks from her labours, one to sip from a bowl of Chinese tea, the other to nibble at a plate of tinned peach slices dipped in plain yoghurt. Neither Gemma nor Alice show the slightest interest in her progress, preferring to watch Simon’s muscular frame being put through its paces as he attends to the various odd jobs they’ve given him.

We’ll see which one of us lands him first.

Sylvia had won that contest hands down. But the night Ruth came back…

At two o’clock Alice asks her to pour a glass of tonic wine for Mrs Harbron next door.

“You’ll find the bottles in the larder. Choose the elderberry, she likes that. It’s non-alcoholic, of course. And you needn’t knock. She expects a visit around this time.”

Elsie is asleep in the armchair when Sylvia enters the darkened living room. She places the glass on the mantelpiece, then pulls back the curtains and walks over to shake the old lady by the shoulder.

“Mrs Harbron…Mrs Harbron…I’ve brought your drink.”

Elsie’s eyes spring open. They immediately settle on Sylvia’s apron.

“So she’s got you skivvyin’ for ‘er, as she? How’d she talk yer into that?” When Sylvia doesn’t answer, Elsie sighs and shakes her head. “I see she’s sent yer with me daily dose o’ poison.”

“Poison?”

“That wine she wants us to drink. Elderberry, just like in the film. Come out durin’ the war it did. I took our Jim to see it. We ‘ad to get the tram into Stranton an’ watch it at the Lex ‘cause the Gaumont ‘ad burnt down a year or two before. Can’t think o’ what it was called or who was in it. Might’ve been Cary Grant. Aye, it was.”

Sylvia picks up the glass and holds it to her nose. There’s a suggestion of bitterness in the aroma coming from it, but no more than that.

“Are you saying there’s something wrong with this?”

“I know that the first few times I took it I used to wake up the next mornin’ with these splittin’ ‘eadaches, an’ I couldn’t get off the lavvy.”

“And now?”

“I just get rid of it when she’s not lookin’.”

“D’you think she’s–“

“Tryin’ to do away with us? Don’t be daft. I’m keepin’ me eye on ‘er though. An’ you better ‘ad too if she’s got yer waitin’ on ‘er ‘and an’ foot.”

Sylvia returns to number 6 in a state of increasing agitation. She knows that it’s wrong to doubt her suitability for the role the saylanan has chosen for her, yet Elsie’s last remark has left her feeling deeply ashamed of the menial position she now occupies.

A few more years an’ Norah’ll let ‘er run the place ‘erself.

She’d sacrificed everything to help mam keep the hotel going after dad had died. And Ruth Pattison has taken it from them.

How could she have let that happen?

That’s where you’re mistaken, Sylvia Russell. The decision is not up to you.

It isn’t right.

The Gladstone is mam’s property.

And if mam dies, what then?

Will the shell of a woman Sylvia has become prove strong enough to hold on to her inheritance? Is it not far more likely that she’ll just meekly sign it away?

In the kitchen, Gemma and Alice point her towards the loaves and buns, the cartons of eggs, the blocks of Cheddar and Double Gloucester, the carrots, the cress, the sticks of celery, the jars of mayonnaise and coleslaw, the tubs of margarine, the pickles, the crackers, the cakes, the gateaux and all the other provisions Simon has raided from the Gladstone’s stores. Sylvia goes to work on them at once, her features betraying not a hint of resentment at this casual appropriation of someone else’s goods. Her mind is elsewhere; it’s focused on the cupboard where she locked the object she discovered in Gemma’s jacket, and the bottle she saw on the bottom shelf.

She’ll have a look at that when she gets the chance.

Her thoughts are too jumbled for her to know why, but she has a nasty suspicion that it contains elderberry wine.

The entrance to Northcroft’s Borough Hall is as unspectacular as the rock garden it faces. A glass door is set beside a window less than a dozen feet wide through which can be seen tripods holding advertisements for the diminishing range of services the council can afford to run, and a felted backdrop filled with watercolours of the headland painted by local schoolchildren.

Sylvia Russell, whose task it is to hand out a programme of events to each of the congregation as they arrive, only has eyes for the black lacquer covering her nails and the glistening black gemstones mounted on the silver rings she wears on each of her fingers and thumbs. Even more than the smart black jacket and matching dress the saylanan presented to her by way of thanks for all the hard work she put in this afternoon, these accessories have convinced her that she has a real part to play in the movement, that the Church of the Eternal Mind has welcomed her into the fold if not yet as a full acolyte then certainly as a follower who possesses the potential to be one.

Her lips are black too, and didn’t that have Penny Cattrick’s brow lifting when she turned up with her niece! Paula Cockburn — Paula Harbron as was — looked as if she could have been knocked to the ground with a wad of cotton wool!

Sylvia’s doubts have evaporated. The saylanan’s message is about to be broadcast to the general public for the first time, heralding the dawn of a brand new era. Epiphany is coming, and its advent will begin here in Northcroft.

And yet it was elderberry wine…

Now the converted make their appearance, most of whom attended the tea held for them in the Gladstone a few hours earlier. Dr Vasey, his wife Carol and their eldest daughter Elaine. Eleanor and Christina Kyte. Josephine Bishop. Gemma Egerton and Simon Whitaker. Alice Hodgson and Paul Smailes. The four fully transformed kuzkardesh gara from the Sunny Hollow nest, bewigged so as not to alarm the local populace.

Finally the black limousine driven by Toby Cunningham, the saylanan by his side.

Sylvia bows her head as Toby helps Ruth from the car. So do the kuzkardesh gara, who have formed a guard of honour for their queen. But the atmosphere of reverence is disturbed by the knot of youths who have gathered on the other side of the road.

“Oi, witchy lips!” one of them shouts. “We don’t want people like you on the ‘eadland.”

“Aye, fuck off back to China,” another calls out.

Toby begins striding towards them, but Ruth pulls him up with a single hissed syllable.

“Why don’t you come in and hear what we have to say?” she asks the boys.

“No fuckin’ way.”

“Do we look like doyles?”

“You don’t understand. You’re not being given the choice.”

To Sylvia’s astonishment they all troop obediently forward, pausing only to collect a programme on their way through the door. She glances up at Toby, and sees something more disconcerting than awe and wonder in those wide grey eyes.

Fear.

Pure unadulterated fear.

Is this what the brave new world is to be founded upon?

She forces the heresy from her mind. Ruth is her mistress, her role model, her icon.

Her saylanan.

Even if it was elderberry wine.

Sylvia is the last to enter the building. She makes her way along the short corridor that leads to the hall itself, where about two hundred people are seated below the stage. Simon has already embarked on a warm-up turn, his enthusiastic demeanour and witty but gentle sense of humour drawing ripples of laughter from the audience. Before Sylvia has found an empty chair close enough to the aisle that she won’t have to make half the row stand to let her reach it, Simon has introduced Toby.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he smiles. “Are we going to be finished in time for last orders at the Priory? The answer is yes. But I’m confident that the majority of you, once you’ve listened to our speaker this evening, will go away from here so filled with inner peace it won’t occur to you to drown it in alcohol. Some claim, I know! In an hour you’ll appreciate why I’m justified in making it. Please welcome the saylanan of the Church of the Eternal Mind, Deng Liu-xiang.”

Sylvia gasps as loudly as anyone around her when Ruth’s first act on arriving at the lectern in the centre of the stage is to unfasten the hooks of her jacket and reveal the translucent bodice beneath.

“’A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me’,” she quotes from the sheet in front of her. “’He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.’

“Those words come from The Song of Solomon. They are the last reference to religion you will hear in this meeting.

“It was once believed that nature, in all its varied forms, must have been created by a designer working to a plan. We now know that natural selection is responsible. That is correct, the Church of the Eternal Mind believes in the theory of evolution.”

The saylanan’s mesmeric voice and restless eyes, which neglect no section of the hall, soon have the audience entranced. She goes on to outline the idea of genes as self-replicating units of DNA, explaining how they determine our physical characteristics, our susceptibility to certain diseases and even the length of our lives. She then moves on to memes, which she argues are analogous to genes but consist solely of information. After presenting many examples, she makes her central point: that just as the human body is a vehicle for the transmission of genes from one generation to the next, so the ‘self’ is a construct to aid the survival of memes.

“We do not expect you to take this on trust,” she concedes. “But there are some mental exercises you can perform that may help you to see the self for what it is: nothing more than an illusion.

“One is to concentrate on the present moment. You can try it now. Look up at the ceiling, or down at the floor, or at one of the walls. If you’re thinking about something that happened in the past, let it go. If you’re thinking about the future, let that go too. Come back to the present. Notice what is there. Don’t label it with words, just see it.

“Better still, look out of a window. Watch a tree rustle in the breeze. With practice you’ll find that past, present and future merge into one. What you thought were separate events are in fact only a series of changes. The idea of a ‘self’ who is doing the watching will seem to fade away.

“Another method is to pay attention to everything at once. Have a go.” She waits for thirty or forty seconds. “Thoughts came from nowhere, did they not? How many of you remembered something you wish you’d said but didn’t? Or said and wish you hadn’t? How many of you heard a tune run through your head? How many of you thought about money? How many of you thought about sex? Those were memes, competing for ascendancy inside your brain. They were controlling the attention, not you.”

Ruth continues speaking, but Sylvia can’t hear her. Elsie Harbron’s words have returned to her, as they did when she opened the bottle of elderberry wine in the cupboard and smelled the same bitterness she’d sensed wafting from the ‘tonic’ Alice Hodgson had instructed her to give the old lady.

Elderberry, just like in the film. Come out durin’ the war it did… Can’t think o’ what it was called or who was in it. Might’ve been Cary Grant.

Cary Grant.

Famous for starring in some of Sylvia’s favourite movies when she was a teenager, including the Hitchcock classics To Catch A Thief and North By Northwest.

Before that, Frank Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace.

Ruth’s ‘mental exercises’ have enabled Sylvia to see the situation as it really is. The facts that have been staring her in the face can all be connected, and they point to one inescapable conclusion.

The saylanan has poisoned her mother.

“Suppose you are in the bath and the water is beginning to get cold,” Ruth is saying. “Do you get out now, or snuggle under for a bit longer? This is a trivial decision, but knowing there is no real self to choose and no free will, you can only reflect that your body either will or will not get up, and indeed it does. The decision makes itself. Although the brain may turn over the possibilities and come down on one side rather than the other, it can do so without the false idea that someone inside is directing it.”

The saylanan has poisoned her mother.

“All our hopes and desires are based on an inner self who must be kept happy. But if there is no self, what can be gained by wishing for things on behalf of someone who does not exist? They do not matter. There is no one for them to matter to.”

The saylanan has poisoned her mother.

She knew.

When she placed the polythene bag in her pocket, intending to use the metal egg inside to hold against Ruth’s cheek until she screamed out a confession, she knew.

The rings, the nail varnish and the lip gloss had seduced her into forgetfulness.

They couldn’t now.

The saylanan has poisoned her mother.

Sylvia starts coughing and spluttering, excuses herself and runs to the back of the hall. She takes a few moments pretending to recover, then inches towards the right-hand corner. From here she has a clear run to the steps going up to the stage. Simon is standing at their foot, but if she’s quick she’ll be past him before he knows what’s happening.

Keep moving.

Five rows of seats to go.

They haven’t seen her.

Four.

Take that thing out of the bag.

Three.

She’s still okay.

Two.

Oh God it’s cold.

One…

She hurls her body forward, leaps up the steps and brandishes the metal egg in full view of Ruth as she turns to confront her attacker. The saylanan’s eyes blaze with fury, but Sylvia’s momentum has endowed her with a force even the queen of a kuzkardesh gara hive cannot counteract. Lectern and saylanan go crashing to the boards.

Her fingers almost numb, Sylvia kneels to press the egg into Ruth’s face. She doesn’t care what the consequences might be, all she wants is for her mother’s poisoner to suffer.

“Wait!” cries Toby.

Sylvia is distracted for less than a second, but it’s long enough for Ruth’s hyzmatkar to snatch the egg from her. She bursts into tears, for now she really has lost everything.

She doesn’t see him place the object in Ruth’s palm as she attempts to rise.

She doesn’t see him twist the saylanan’s arm behind her head.

She doesn’t see him slam her hand into the back of her neck.

But she hears the sorrowful wail that follows, because it’s echoed by every convert in the hall.