The air felt warm after the wintry conditions back home and I found myself standing on a wooden jetty at the edge of a lake. In front of me there was a large and seemingly derelict flying boat of the sort that still plied the coastal routes back home. I had flown on one myself not six months before on the trail of someone claiming to have found some unpublished Burns poetry. But that was another lifetime ago, when I was with SpecOps in Swindon, the world I had temporarily left behind.

I donned a pair of dark glasses and stared at the ancient flying boat, which rocked gently in the breeze, tautening the mooring ropes and creaking gently. As I watched the old aircraft, wondering just how long something this decrepit could stay afloat, a well-dressed young woman stepped out of an oval-shaped door in the high-sided hull. She was carrying a suitcase. I had read Caversham Heights so I knew Mary well, although she didn't know me.

'Hello!' she shouted, trotting up and offering me a hand. 'I'm Mary. You must be Thursday. My goodness! What's that?'

'A dodo. Her name's Pickwick.'

Pickwick plocked and stared at Mary suspiciously.

'Really?' she replied, looking at the bird curiously. 'I'm no expert, of course, but … I thought dodos were extinct.'

'Where I come from they're a bit of a pest.'

'Oh?' mused Mary. 'I'm not sure I've heard of a book with live dodos in it.'

'I'm not a bookperson,' I told her, 'I'm real.'

'Oh!' exclaimed Mary, opening her eyes wide. 'An Outlander.'

She touched me inquisitively with a slender index finger, as though I might be made of glass.

'I've never seen someone from the other side before,' she announced, clearly relieved to find that I wasn't going to shatter into a thousand pieces. 'Tell me, is it true you have to cut your hair on a regular basis? I mean, your hair actually grows?

'Yes.' I smiled. 'And my fingernails, too.'