The two girls had their backs to him, walking with a measured companionable pace towards the stairs. They stopped as soon as the bright fan of light from his room splashed out into the landing, and slowly turned towards him. Rosette was wrapped in a jade-green silk kimono, embellished with fantastical topaz griffins. She was obviously riding some kind of high, he'd seen enough of that at Cambridge to tell; black sun pupils, dawdling movements. Probably Naiad, a sophisticated derivative of street-syntho, guaranteed no bad trips, no cold turkey. The vat in the lab downstairs was elaborate enough to produce it.

Isabel was still in her jeans, held up by a braided leather belt she'd fastened with a big loop tucked back into her waistband. She had taken off her blouse, leaving just a plain black bra to cup her high, exquisitely shaped breasts.

Nicholas stared at her with lightheaded dismay, the kind of sensation he got whenever his father butchered spring lambs. The scene and all it implied was too macabre, too lascivious to take in. In the gloom behind the girls he could see the red-headed woman again, all of her this time. She was tall and broad shouldered, wearing some kind of jacket with a long skirt. He blinked, dizziness forcing him to grip the door to stop himself falling. His skin was ice cold, needled with hot beads of sweat. He thought he was about to be sick. The world buckled alarmingly, sight and sound dissolving under a suffocating wave of heat. He was hallucinating, he was sure of it, the only explanation, trapped in a terrifying loop of nightmare. When his vision shimmered back into focus the phantom woman had gone. But Isabel and Rosette were still solidly, undeniably present.

A corner of Rosette's mouth lifted in a lazy chaffing smile, as if she was glad he'd interrupted them. "Adults only, Nicky, darling," she said in a throaty voice. "Sorry."