The sound of someone moving around downstairs rouses me from a dreamless sleep. I sit up, yawn and push a hand back through my hair. It feels even more lank and lifeless than usual, prompting me to make a mental note to ask Janice if she can do something about it, preferably within the next few days.

For a moment I wonder why I’m not wearing pyjamas — then I see the scrap of paper poking from the book on the bedside table, and everything else is reduced to insignificance.

Siz okde.

You are gifted.

I’m in a house occupied by four kuzkardesh gara, and whatever abilities they’ve identified in me are valuable enough to justify keeping me here against my will.

They want me to join their hive.

To add my gift to their collective subconscious.

Imagine living in a street where everyone starts the day with a cup of tea except you, who always have coffee. One morning you walk into the kitchen and instead of coffee you make tea, because that’s what you prefer first thing. You don’t suddenly think of yourself as a tea drinker. You just like tea, the same as your neighbours.

And unless Susan Dwyer was making everything up as she went along, the conversion process is so insidious it could be well underway before I understand what’s happening to me.

Getting away from here would seem to figure reasonably highly on today’s list of things to do.

Emptying my bladder holds the number one spot. I pick up the dress Donna chose for me yesterday, holding it in front of my chest as I pad down to the bathroom. Once I’ve relieved myself I shower — but I don’t lather my hair before I’ve tested the soap on my pubes to make sure it won’t dissolve them like that stuff from Romania did when Kerrie Latimer used it on me. Better safe than sorry.

Better anything than being bald.

As I step from the tub it occurs to me that my clothes and other possessions may well be hidden either in the Dormobile or the barn it’s parked outside. Not that I feel particularly cheered by this sudden insight; without a crowbar to hand they might as well be buried in a strongbox on Pitcairn Island for all the chance I have of getting at them.

I wrap myself in towels, then open the cabinet above the washbasin to take a new toothbrush from the rack.

“Okde,” I mutter as I finish rinsing my mouth. “Siz okde.”

I’ve heard that phrase before. I know I have.

And I suspect it’ll be to my lasting benefit if I can only recall where.

Back in the bedroom, I scowl at the attire I have no choice but to wear until I can recover my own.

You just like tea, the same as your neighbours.

How long would I have to stay here before I came to regard this style of dress as normal? I suspect that’s one of the things I’ll need to watch out for.

I fasten my suspenders with surprising proficiency, but the zip at the back of my dress causes me no end of frustration before I eventually force it to the top. Nor do my shoes, which may be half a size too small — deliberately, no doubt — pinch any the less.

“Bir bolmak hemme.”

I jerk my head to the left at the sound of Gillian’s voice, but there’s no one else in the room. And it seemed much too clear to have come from the landing.

Bir bolmak hemme.

It’s the same language as before. Ugur, or whatever she called it.

As for what that phrase might mean, I don’t think I want to find out.

On the way to the door I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the dressing-table mirror. It’s not an uplifting sight: there are shadows under my eyes, and my hair is sticking up all over. If by some miracle Simon was to make an appearance now, I wouldn’t give much for the chances of him drawing me into his arms once we’d made our escape, let alone treating me to a long, delicious kiss. We might not even get that far — the shape I’m in he’d probably leave me behind for one of the kuzkardesh gara.

Would you believe it, I finally get asked out by a man I’m physically attracted to and something like this has to happen.

Just you wait, Alice Patricia Hodgson. I’ll still be reminding you about this when that kid in your belly is knitting booties for her first grandchild.

My self-esteem has risen slightly once I’ve added a couple of long necklaces to my outfit, so that when I glance down I can see more than just my naked breasts. It nosedives again after I notice how pallid my complexion appears without any foundation or rouge.

They’ve got my cigarettes too, damn them. It’s a good job they haven’t thought of trading fags for locks of hair or I’d be a skinhead by this time tomorrow.

“Bir bolmak hemme…”

There it is again!

Get out of my brain!

I stand up and sweep every item in front of me to the floor. This has gone on long enough.

I have to leave now. Fooling these women into thinking I’m coming round to their point of view has become an indulgence I can’t afford.

Not when I’ve started hearing voices.

I’m getting out of here, and no force on earth can stop me.

Except one.

When I reach the living room, Louise is leaning against the door to the vestibule as she rocks her little son in her arms, whilst Gillian is blocking the entrance to the kitchen. It’s as if they’ve divined my intentions and moved to counter them.

With a good deal of success. I’m no scrawny, underfed waif, but I simply don’t have the strength to push past someone of Gillian’s build. Even her daughter would present me with a problem unless I resorted to violence. And they know full well that as a woman I’d rather shoot myself in the vagina than risk harm coming to a three month old baby.

There’s got to be another way, one that involves tact and guile.

“Salam, Ruth,” smiles Louise, and all at once the solution is staring me in the face.

“Uh, salam,” I reply. “That’s the word they use for ‘hello’ in the Middle East, isn’t it?”

“Ugur is related to Turkish. It also contains elements of Arabic.”

“The meme programs our minds to think in Ugur,” explains Gillian. “We can still speak English, but it is no longer our native tongue.”

“It actually takes quite an effort,” admits Louise.

“The meme scrambles the patterns of neural signals that enable an avatar to use language as a means of communication. After they have been reconfigured she has become a Turcophone, and always will be. She has to rely on her episodic memory if she needs to revert, as we are doing now.”

“I see…” is the response I make — though I don’t, not really. “So what’s ‘baby’?”

“Babek,” answers Hilary, coming in from the dining room.

“That’s easy to remember! Would you mind if I, uh…?”

“Elbetde,” Louise hisses in reply to my unfinished question, her expression translating the term more effectively than any dictionary. She’s telling me of course I can hold him, she trusts me implicitly.

Can she really be that easy to hoodwink?

But as I take Philip from her, the love she feels for him engulfs me, transcending her outlandish appearance and making me viscerally aware of what it must be like to care for the living being I carried in my womb and gave birth to.

“Salam, babek,” I murmur to him, my eyes as adoring as his mother’s. Gillian and Hilary have arrived at my side, their hips pressing lightly against mine. We all start laughing when Philip’s tiny fingers try to shove my beads aside so he can get at my nipple. Donna is here too, her giggles adding to the merriment.

You struggle against us now, Ruth Hansford-Jones, but that which is within you may not be gainsaid.

Susan Dwyer’s warning thunders through my consciousness. This is how the meme operates, latching on to something that’s already inside the victim and changing it to suit its own purposes. It amplifies her desires, at the same time shaping them into the form best equipped to ensure their transmission.

And she hasn’t a clue what’s happening until it’s too late to do anything about it.

I’ve wrenched my mind free from the spell by the time I realise there’s no one between me and the door. I snuggle Philip against my right breast, freeing my left hand to turn the handle. To my immense relief, the jacket I wore yesterday evening is still on its peg.

“I’m going now,” I announce. “I’ll put the baby down when I’m certain I’m not being followed.”

None of the kuzkardesh gara move an inch. Unable to believe my good fortune, I lift the jacket by the collar and punch my arm into the sleeve. Unfastening the Yale lock proves to be a tricky business one-handed, but the taste of liberty is on my tongue and I’m not about to let it trickle from my mouth.

Once I’m outside, I slam the door shut. Depositing Philip on the dew-soaked grass — I don’t suppose he’ll be unattended for more than a moment or two so I have no concerns regarding the child’s safety — I head straight for the road. It’s a tough ascent in high heels; nor is my ability to concentrate on keeping my balance helped by the fact that I’ve eaten practically nothing during the last twenty-four hours.

Breathless and sweating profusely, I reach the top of the path. The Dormobile is still parked outside the barn. It’s locked, of course, and although I’m desperate enough to consider wrapping the sleeve of my jacket around my fist and smashing one of the side windows I’d have more chance of swallowing the engine whole than of starting it without the keys. I waste a few more precious seconds rattling the barn door, already beginning to feel as if I’m fighting for a lost cause.

Somehow I bully myself into thinking more positively. I’m more than twenty miles from home, I have no money and I fear that before long I’ll be ravenously hungry. On the other hand, conditions couldn’t be more favourable: the sunshine has that hazy quality that suggests the weather will soon be overcast and therefore reasonably cool, whilst the recent dry spell means that if I have to cut across country to avoid pursuit I’ll be in no danger of stumbling into a quagmire.

With any luck it won’t come to that.

Glancing behind me every few yards to check that the road is still clear — if one of the kuzkardesh gara comes after me she’ll need to put on her wig and change her make-up, which should give me a bit more time to play with — I walk down to the old railway crossing as fast as my shoes will let me.

The stone cottage beside it looks as devoid of life as the lightning tree in the corner of the field climbing to the wooded ridge on my right. Before I disturb the owner of the white Skoda taking up most of the forecourt I tug at the front of my jacket to test the strength of the hooks holding it closed. The last thing I need is for my tits to pop out while I’m begging to use the phone.

I knock loudly and repeatedly, but to no avail. I’m far from downhearted, however. I can see a farmhouse less than a quarter of a mile ahead, and the entrance to another the same distance along the lane leading from the junction to the beck.

The rumble of a vehicle approaching from the head of the valley has me rushing to open the crossing gate so I can hide round the back of the guards’ van. Although it turns out to be a grey Vauxhall Viva with an unaccompanied male driver, I’m reluctant to return to the road. In my black jacket and dress I’ll be all too easy to spot when my captors eventually start searching for me.

And they might not be the only ones.

I’ve got to disappear, and I’ve got to do it today. I won’t be safe in Northcroft; when the MoD learn that their ploy has failed, they may well opt for a more orthodox means of ensuring I don’t talk. As for where I should pick as a bolt-hole, the further away the better. A croft on a remote Scottish island seems a pretty desirable residence at present.

One thing I don’t have to worry about is supporting myself. Suki was telling the truth when she said I’d been paid handsomely for my work as a government agent. Thanks to the MoD’s munificence I now have nearly five thousand pounds to call on, which I’ve salted away in six separate bank and building society accounts. After a year or so it’s possible that I’d be forced to eke out a living serving pints of Tartan in some Hebridean drinking hovel; then again, I could end up marrying a laird and have servants attending to my every whim.

Will there be anything else, Lady McTavish?

A pot of tea would be nice, Morag. And if you wouldn’t mind asking Cruikshank to walk the collies down to the loch and back?

All that’s conditional on me getting back to the Gladstone by the middle of the afternoon at the very latest, so I can gather my things together and set about laying a false trail to fool people into thinking I’ve gone back down south to deal with a family emergency. I’ll stay in York tonight, then aim for somewhere on the other side of the Pennines to lie low until I’ve liquidated my assets and I’m ready to cross the border.

Fleetwood.

Why not? I’ve never been to Fleetwood. I bet it’s very nice there, on the coast and everything.

It’s not quite the last place anyone would think to look for me, but it’ll be in the top five.

First I need to phone for a cab, and to do that I’ll have to find a house where at least one of the occupants is awake.

I decide to take a chance and follow the trackbed, which is clearly distinguishable from the footpath rising at a gentle but constant gradient for the woods. The railway’s course appears to have run north, away from the foot of the escarpment; there’s every likelihood it’ll pass close to some of the farms and hamlets scattered across the countryside between here and Stokesley. Treading carefully in shoes that hurt more with each step I take, I start out on the next stage in my bid for freedom.

I haven’t walked more than three or four hundred yards before I recognise that I’m rapidly coming to the end of my tether. The mist has thickened, and every lungful of air I inhale seems laden with moisture. Despite the lack of sunshine, the temperature has continued to increase. I daren’t undo my jacket in case I meet someone out for an early morning stroll with his dog; just as annoying, when I push back my fringe, my hand comes away feeling like it’s been through a lump of straw coated in lard.

After about half a mile the trail enters a shallow cutting. This soon opens onto a wide bowl whose sheer, rocky slopes identify it as a disused quarry.

And there the track ends.

I’ve been going the wrong way. All I’ve done is walk down a very long cul-de-sac.

Shitbags!

I sit on one of the smoother boulders strewn around the depression, my fingers immune to the despair clouding my vision as they busy themselves arranging the folds of my dress. Not since I made the discovery that I’d be female for the rest of my life have I felt so low.

But I refuse to cry.

I didn’t then and I won’t now.

“Bir bolmak hemme…”

Not you again!

Can’t you leave me in peace?

I start back for the crossing, mainly because I don’t know what else to do. The footpath still runs parallel to the railway, but I’ll only be able to reach it by crawling up the side of the cutting. And if, as looks likely, it doesn’t skirt the woods but cuts through them to the moorland above, I’ll be faced with not just an exhausting scramble but also a hike of several miles across difficult terrain in poor visibility. With these shoes I’d be risking serious injury and worse.

At the gate I pause, checking to see that the road is clear. The track on the other side of the crossing disappears into a ploughed field. But the line of trees snaking along the valley floor gives me an idea. The dry weather means there won’t have been much run-off; I could follow the channel downstream, perhaps as far as the village. Marginally less irritated at the quirks and caprices of Mother Nature, I jog the short distance to the junction, then stride down the lane in the direction of the beck.

A narrow pathway diverges to the right, threading and dipping through riotous bushes to a precarious wooden footbridge. To my surprise the stream remains fairly vigorous, though the water is nowhere more than a few inches deep. I sit down, take off my shoes and gently lever my body off the slats until my feet are planted in the shallows on either side of the bed. Although my stockings insulate me from the worst of the sudden chill that shoots into my soles, I still let out a high-pitched squeal.

It turns out to be the first of many. With only one hand to fend off the overhanging branches I have to duck beneath in order to prevent their twigs snagging my hair, I find it almost impossible to maintain any sort of balance as I struggle along, one awkward step at a time. The stones and pebbles washed down by the current are jagged enough to tear the nylon protecting my feet to ribbons. Fearing that they’ll soon be lacerating my skin as well, I stoop to put my shoes back on — which only slows my progress more.

Fallen logs, clumps of reeds, banks cancerous with stinging nettles, and now clouds of midges so dense I can scarcely breathe without ingesting dozens of the little blighters…

But it’s the waterfall that defeats me. The drop is only about six feet, yet I can see no way to negotiate it that doesn’t involve jumping — and once I’m down there, I’ll have burned my boats. The sides of the gorge the stream has eroded are almost vertical. Were I to break an ankle I’d be trapped, yelling for help until my voice gave out and starvation or exposure finished me off.

Freedom is a wonderful thing, but it’s of little use to a carcass.

Half an hour or so later, weary, bedraggled, and smarting from a bruised thumb, I arrive back at the crossing. It’s as if I’m a character in one of those films set in a haunted house when no matter how hard the protagonists try to escape, they keep returning to it.

This time I come upon a thin, grey-haired man in a pair of dark blue overalls pulling weeds from the grass verge outside the cottage. He looks up as I draw nearer, then retreats two or three paces when he notices what I’m wearing. He couldn’t be more apprehensive if I’d just threatened to turn him into a toad.

“Excuse me,” I call out, doing my best to put on an approximation of a smile, “do you live here?”

“What if I do?”

“Listen, I really need to use your phone to ring for a taxi. I’d pay for the call, but the women in Sunny Hollow have hidden all my money. They took my clothes too, that’s why I’m dressed like this.”

He frowns, then carries on with his weeding.

“No business o’ mine, what goes on up there.”

“You’ve got to help me, please!” I cry, pulling at his elbow. “I’ve been kidnapped, for God’s sake!”

“Yer must think I were born yesterday,” he glowers. “Kidnapped, yer say? Funny sort o’ kidnappers, lettin’ yer wander round on yer tod.”

“I managed to give them the slip, you stupid…sorry, I’m at my wit’s end. If they find me now–“

“Aye, they said one o’ yer’d try an’ trick yer way in sooner or later.”

“Who did?”

“Men from council. Don’t ‘ave owt to do wi’ em, they told us. An’ whatever yer do, yer mustn’t let ‘em past front door. Not for any reason, they said. Any reason.”

“Fine. Then I’ll wait here while you make the call. I’ll go and stand fifty yards down the road if you don’t trust me.”

“Who yer rabbitin’ on wi’ out there?” cries a woman from the open passageway.

“It’s one o’ witches from up dale. Stop inside an’ keep thesel’ out o’ sight. Tell lasses an’ all.”

“I’m not with them!” I protest. “They abducted me!”

“Pull t’other one, love. Yer’ve got that look in yer eyes, same as rest of ‘em. Now clear off afore I set dogs on yer.”

He goes indoors, leaving me incandescent with fury. I stare at the two nearby farms, knowing the same short shrift awaits me in both of them. Nor is there any point in appealing to the folk who live in the line of houses further down the main road, for I’ll find no pity within any of those walls. The only welcome I’ll get is in Sunny Hollow.

Behind the front window of the cottage, the curtains are twitching. They fall closed when I turn towards them.

I march up to the glass, sorely tempted to put my foot through it.

“All I wanted was a fucking taxi!” I shout. “You’d think I was one of the moors murderers, the way you’re going on!”

I move to stand by the gate, my thoughts dissolving in their own wretchedness. People like him are the reason humanity will lose the war that’s coming.

Yer’ve got that look in yer eyes, same as rest of ‘em.

They see everything, and understand precisely nothing.

A middle-aged couple, both carrying rucksacks, appear at the top of the path. I watch them exchange glances as they approach me. He’s intrigued, if a little wary; to her I’m a black-garbed spook.

“We can show you how to evolve beyond their puny abilities, Ruth Pattison.”

Gillian has waited for the ramblers to reach the junction before stepping from the cover of the roadside hedge. She’s wearing a jacket and a wig, but hasn’t bothered to wipe the black gloss from her lips and nails.

“You really think you’re a different species,” I snort at her.

“We are the future, Ruth Pattison. We are the only hope this planet has.”

“You’re modest, I’ll say that for you.”

“Gillian Dixon is puzzled by that statement,” she frowns.

“Of course you are. I’m being sarcastic. It’s a technique we poor, inadequate individuals use to show our contempt for those who have too high an opinion of themselves. It works best when you demonstrate some creativity — but then you’ve lost the capacity for that, along with all the other qualities that make life worthwhile. You want to turn every woman in the world into a baby machine, and every man into a sex addict. Some future.”

The kuzkardesh gara grants me a charitable smile.

“It is a question of priorities. Ours are food, shelter and access to clean water. For everyone.”

“Oh yeah? How are you going to achieve that?”

“Population control. Resettlement programmes. A reliance on cheap, renewable energy. Sustainable development. Local economies tailored to suit the available resources.”

“Very laudable, I’m sure. But have you any idea what you’ll be up against?”

“Most revolutions fail because they try to change things from the top down. They begin by preaching equality, but quickly degenerate into power struggles. This one will be different. We transform the human race a few at a time, working at a grass-roots level. With each addition to a hive mind it grows in strength and influence. Eventually the largest of these minds will subsume the others, and then it can make the final preparations for Epiphany.”

That word again.

…an epiphany of some kind was coming...

It was in the letter Rachel Sawdon received from Sarah-Jane Collingwood. But as for what it means…

“Okay, I give in. What’s Epiphany?”

“It is the moment when the mind of every woman on Earth has been incorporated into the universal consciousness.”

“And what happens after that?”

“There is no ‘after’. The cycle of birth and death will continue, but Epiphany is eternal.”

Full stop. Period. Punkt.

“And the purpose of all this is…?”

“The Epiphany is its own purpose — as you will come to learn, Ruth Pattison.” Her eyes lose their focus, and with it any pretence of humanity. “Bir bolmak hemme–“

I slap her right cheek with all the force I can summon up. She recoils from the blow, but as she slowly turns her face back towards me all I can detect there is pity.

“Bir bolmak hemme,” she repeats. “Bir bolmak hemme, song hemme bolmak agzybir.”

And suddenly the phrase loses its mystique.

One shall be all, then all shall be as one.

The mantra Susan Dwyer recited to me in Glastonbury.

The meme that will bring an end to the illusion of selfhood and facilitate the assimilation of every woman alive into the universal female mind.

The meme that has now infected me, and if left to its own devices will gradually alter my subconscious mind until I too am no longer human.

“Come back to us,” Gillian entreats me.

How can I refuse? I need food, rest and time to collect my thoughts if I’m to emerge from the coming struggle with my individuality intact.

The kuzkardesh gara offers me her arm. After a moment’s hesitation, I take it.

Fleetwood will just have to wait.