“He might.”

“How?”

“He knows about this place. They don’t.”

I let my head fall back against the wall and heave a heavy, disbelieving sigh. “Whatever is going on here, there’s still a Chiu in the ordinary world and the doctors say he’s going to be fine. There’s no reason to think they’re wrong.”

“There is. Think about it,” Farah says. “Have you ever heard about this place? Read about it? Seen TV programmes about it?”

I shift uneasily. “I guess not.”

“But we know we’re not the only people who have ended up here. So, it stands to reason. Nobody who ends up here makes it back to the ordinary world to tell their story.”

Farah and Chiu are gone when I wake up the next morning.

Panic squeezes inside me.

They left?

I stare at the cream walls and tan carpet of the sad little library and imagine myself here alone. I imagine them discussing it while I was asleep, concluding that I’d never go with them so they should make it easier on all of us and just leave. My heart thuds and the walls feel as if they’re closing around me. I can’t go back to being that person, living my life locked up and all alone.

I think about what Farah said. We know we’re not the only people to come here. So maybe Chiu’s right: if anyone ever got back to the ordinary world we’d know about this place. There’s an awful, undeniable logic to it that Chiu understood right from the start.

When we met him, he thought he was a ghost. He believed us when we told him that he wasn’t, but he never believed that he was going to get better naturally. He’d been reading for years with the aim of understanding the world he found himself in, since he met us he’d been reading for another purpose: to escape.

The note on Farah’s mattress is half lost among the detritus of sheets and books: “Hey sleepyhead. Enjoy your lie-in. Gone to see the baby.”

I shudder with relief, fighting the urge to break down and cry. I’m such a fool. I panicked, that’s all.

I put down the note and go in search of Farah. In the corridor, I can feel the doctors and nurses and patients in the ordinary world nearby, brushing against me, always just out of sight, their breath teasing the back of my neck. It’s a claustrophobic feeling, as if nothing exists beyond my immediate field of vision, as if the world is a gaping, black absence and the walls and details are being drawn in only in the instant before I look at them.

I hurry down the corridors, following the signs to Neonatal. I would be scared of getting lost but I know it’s on the same level as the library and hospitals are, at least, well signposted.

I hear Farah as I round the last corner, singing softly, the baby burbling along with her as if it’s trying to sing too. She stops when she hears me and turns to stare at me.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.”

I offer my finger to the baby by means of a greeting. It squirms, then swings its hand round and takes hold with surprising deftness.

“Oh, wow,” I breathe.

Farah laughs. “He likes you.”

I know that in the ordinary world this baby is lying in its cot, unconscious perhaps. What we are holding is the idea of a child: a new person, a brain just beginning to spark into consciousness and that consciousness already caught in a state that’s detached from the ordinary world. I wish I knew how many babies who come through this ward survive. If Chiu’s right, then this idea of a life is already doomed.

“Did you take care of your brothers like this?” I ask.

“My brothers died really young,” Farah answers. “Twins. They were born with a heart condition.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

Farah sighs. “I used to resent them so badly. When I was growing up, our living room was filled with photographs of them. I mean, they hadn’t done anything. They were just born and then they died. So all the photographs were the same: Mum with babies wearing blue hats; Dad with babies wearing knitted cardigans; Farah looking grumpy with babies. Over and over, like my parents were trying to scratch together a fake family album from table scraps. I used to think if I were very clever, or very kind, they’d start to love me more and put up photos of me as well… Nothing worked. But then I got sick and suddenly photos of me started appearing. New ones, old ones, they dredged them out of the shoeboxes hidden under their bed and put them up everywhere. Until it was all photos of me and my brothers disappeared completely. And now I miss them.”

“Farah, I’ve been thinking—”

She flashes me a tired look. “That sounds dangerous.”

“I’ll come with you. You and Chiu, I mean … to London.”

Farah’s lips press into a smile. “I knew you would.”

“But we need to call into my house on the way. I need to check something.”

“Sure.”

“And I think we should only walk for a few hours a day before we find somewhere inside. It’ll take longer, but it’ll limit our exposure.”

“That sounds sensible.”

A feeling bubbles inside me. I don’t know if it’s excitement or cold terror. We’re going outside. I’m being brave. Braver than I thought was possible and it’s because of Farah and Chiu.

The baby stirs in Farah’s arms and I reach out for it again.

“He looks better to me,” I say, caught in a moment of unaccountable optimism. “I think this one’s going to be OK.”

The baby squirms more forcefully and I realize that Farah’s expression has become troubled. She places the baby back in its cot.

“I don’t think so,” she says.

“It could. Even if Chiu is right—”

“Look away,” Farah says, shortly.

The baby’s crying becomes more urgent, its arms strain and relax, strain and relax.

“What’s happening?”

“It’s dying,” Farah responds. “I’ve seen it before.”

“Dying?”

“Don’t look,” Farah says again.

She turns, positioning herself directly in front of me, face to face with her hands on my shoulders so she blocks my view of the cot entirely. I know better than to try to see around her. All I’m aware of is a flurry of movement, a pained sound, an urgency. Flickers of the ordinary world intensify around us. I catch a glimpse of a nurse, two other people. Parents, I think. Their sadness. A quickening, brief, fruitless struggle.

Then it’s over.