The first time Hal had seen her, she had been giving her lunchtime sandwich to a young girl begging on the side of the street. When Hal mentioned it to her later, Samantha had denied her act of charity, which had only intrigued him more. But the one moment — the one shining moment that had changed everything for him — had been in some dingy bar after work when, drunk and argumentative, she’d clubbed Hunter around the head and then, minutes later, given an a cappella version of ‘California Dreamin’’ that had sent shivers down his spine. There was no reason why it should have affected him so deeply; but it had been an alchemical experience, fuelled by magic and mystery in the banal crucible of everyday existence.

He would never forget how she’d made that gold from the base lead of his life; it was too valuable ever to risk losing.

The brothel on St Michael’s Street had become a thriving if frowned-upon establishment ever since the new Government had moved to Oxford and saved the city from ruin. From the outside, the building looked abandoned, but the majority of Government employees knew its location, and for many of the men in the lower ranks it provided a welcome release from the numerous pressures of trying to lead a country thrown back to the Dark Ages.

Hal knocked discreetly on the unmarked door, which was opened by an elderly lady with an ice-cream-cone mound of white hair piled on her head and a little too much make-up on her face. ‘Is Hunter here, Mrs Damask?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Jeffrey’s inside,’ Mrs Damask replied in her lyrical Scottish brogue. ‘Would you like to wait for him?’

‘You know he doesn’t like to be called Jeffrey,’ Hal said as he entered the baroque entrance hall with its atmosphere of incense and classical music playing quietly in the background.