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Natasha lifted herself up a little so that she could kiss him. It felt like a very chaste kiss, especially since her lips were so cold.

‘
I need you
,' she said, and kissed him again, and this time her tongue slid into his mouth.

‘We can't!' he hissed at her, taking hold of her wrist and trying to lever her away from him. But she kissed him again, much more greedily this time, and she began to pant, very quickly, as if she had been running. She twisted her hand free and scratched his bare chest, and then scratched him further and further down his stomach, until she worked her fingers under the waistband of his shorts.

‘Tasha, we can't!' he repeated, but she took hold of his penis, which was already three-quarters erect, and massaged it up and down. Her hand was cold, and he knew that he shouldn't be doing this. Isobel could wake up at any moment. But then he thought:
Tasha is supposed to be my real fiancée, after all, and it was Isobel who made a play for me first
. He was also beginning to find that the danger of making love to Natasha while Isobel was sleeping so close beside him was highly arousing.

Natasha pulled the bedspread aside and climbed on top of him, guiding his penis between her emaciated thighs. She was so thin that he could almost close his hands around her waist. He could feel her ribs, and her breasts were tiny, although her nipples were stiff. He took each of them between his lips in turn, and rolled them against the roof of his mouth with his tongue. Each time she let out a long, quivering exhalation of breath, which sounded almost as if she were dying.

Isobel let out another
mmmffff
and restlessly tugged at the sheets. Michael and Natasha froze and for over ten seconds they stayed utterly still. Natasha was as cold inside as Isobel had been, although her vagina was much tighter, and Michael was already losing all sensation in his penis. Even his testicles were beginning to feel cold, and his scrotum had scrunched up tight.

Isobel seemed to have settled down again, so Natasha started slowly to ride up and down on Michael's penis, making sure that her movements coincided with Isobel's breathing. Each time she lifted herself up so high that his glans almost slipped out of her, but each time she slid herself back down again at the very last moment until he could feel her prominent pubic bone pressing against his, so hard that it was painful.

After three or four minutes, however, she began to ride Michael faster and harder. With every stroke, Michael was pushing himself up into her so forcefully that he was lifting his buttocks clear off the bed. As the pace of their love-making quickened, both of them forgot about Isobel, and what would happen if they woke her up. All they were concentrating on now was that moment of sparkling ice-cold climax.

Which came. And came. And came again. Natasha bent her head down and sank her teeth into Michael's left shoulder, to stop herself from crying out loud.

Afterward they lay in each other's arms, neither of them speaking. The bedroom was now utterly dark. Not even Belle's eyes gleamed at them from out of the closet.

As they lay there, however, and their thumping heartbeats gradually slowed down, they became aware that Isobel was no longer breathing as slowly and regularly as she had been before. In fact she was panting, and panting faster and faster with every second that went by.

Michael could feel the mattress gently quaking, and he could hear what sounded like somebody persistently licking their lips. After less than a minute, Isobel gasped, and shook, and then lay as still as Michael and Natasha.

The three of them lay awake in the darkness until it began to grow light outside. Then, without saying a word and without looking at Michael and Natasha, Isobel got out of bed and went to the bathroom.

Natasha kissed Michael and said, quietly, ‘I think this is my cue to leave. I'll see you later.' She kissed him again, three times, and then she added, ‘I love you, Greg. I love you so much.'

After she had gone back to her room, Michael lay on his own and thought about what had happened. Most of all, he thought about how cold Natasha had felt, just the same as Isobel. How could any woman feel as cold as that, let alone
two
of them? He was beginning to become convinced that maybe they weren't cold at all, and that the iciness he felt when he made love to them was caused by some kind of physical or mental aberration from which
he
was suffering.

Isobel came back into the bedroom. She walked around the bed and stood in front of him, naked. She had the most complicated expression on her face: part jealousy, part arousal, part amusement, but wholly superior.

‘Did you enjoy that?' she asked him.

He could have retorted, ‘Did
you
?' but he kept his mouth tightly closed. The situation was thorny enough already without him making it worse; and apart from that he liked her too much, and he thought that he had probably hurt her quite enough already.

‘I don't mind you fucking her, sweetheart,' said Isobel. ‘In fact, she could share our bed with us every night, if you like. We could have some really good fun. But don't forget that you're mine. That's the whole reason you're here.'

‘I thought I was here so that you could help me to get better.'

‘Of course. But you know what William Blake wrote? “I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love.”'

‘But you said that I was yours. Like I
belong
to you, or something.'

Isobel sat down beside him on the bed. She reached out and touched his face with her fingertips, as if she were blind, and trying to discover what he looked like.

‘You have to, Greg. You know that I couldn't survive without you.'

‘Bill and Margaret Endersby were outside in the yard again last night, along with Jemima and Angela. Tasha was totally freaked out and that's why she got into bed with me.'

‘Just a nightmare, Greg, that's all.'

‘Two people can't have the same nightmare, Isobel.'

‘I know,' she said, enigmatically, and kissed him.

B
reakfast the next morning was silent and uncomfortable. Outside the kitchen window they could see nothing but thick pearly fog. It was a sign that the day would probably be sunny later on, because the snow was evaporating, but at that time of the morning it looked as if the end of the world had arrived, and that zombies would soon come swaying out of the gloom.

Michael had only a single mug of strong black coffee. He had no appetite for Isobel's pancakes with maple syrup, although Natasha asked if she could have one. Isobel sat opposite the two of them, looking from one to the other without saying a word, and eating her own pancakes as if she were punishing them, cutting them sharply and noisily with the edge of her fork.

‘About last night—' said Michael.

Isobel raised her left hand to stop him, and shook her head. ‘I don't want to talk about last night, Greg. Love is never having to explain yourself.'

‘But I swear to God that the Endersbys were out there. And Jemima, and Angela. You wouldn't make up something like that.'

Isobel didn't answer. She finished her pancakes and then she got up and stacked her plate into the dishwasher.

‘I probably won't be here when you two get back from the clinic,' she said. ‘I'm having lunch with George Kelly and Hedda and Diana Quick.'

‘OK,' said Michael. Long pause. ‘Hope you enjoy it.'

‘Thanks for the breakfast,' said Natasha, who had still only half-finished her pancake. Isobel said, ‘
Hm!
' and stalked out of the kitchen.

After breakfast, Michael and Natasha put on their coats without saying a word and left the house, heading for the clinic. Trinity was always quiet, but in the fog it was utterly silent, and the houses looked as if they were all unoccupied. Even the trees appeared as if they were paralysed.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree
.

Michael took Natasha's hand. She was wearing thick blue woolen gloves so he couldn't tell how cold she was.

He coughed, and then he said, ‘You had some things you wanted to tell me.'

‘Yes, I do,' she nodded. ‘Like I said last night, I'm not sure that you're supposed to know any of this, but I really think that you deserve to.'

Michael said, ‘Listen, Tasha, before you say anything, I've made up my mind that you and I need to get the hell out of here – and the sooner the better. Whatever's going on here, it's just too weird. Maybe it's us. Maybe we're seeing things that aren't really there. But I think we need a second opinion on that, and the only way that we can get it is to leave. Like,
today
. As soon as Isobel's gone off for lunch, we'll take her Jeep and find our way back to civilization. There has to be a road out of here somewhere.'

Natasha stopped, and stood still. Her breath smoked in the fog. The silence around them was so complete that Michael could have believed that he had gone deaf.

‘We
can't
,' she said. ‘That was what I was going to tell you.'

‘Why can't we? Isobel said the same damn thing to me.
You can't
. But she didn't tell me why.'

‘Oh, God,' said Natasha, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Doctor Connor and Doctor Hamid should have told you. I don't know why it has to be me.'

‘What? What is it, for Christ's sake? Do I have some kind of disease? That's it, isn't it? I thought it was! Plague? Bird flu? Everybody here in Trinity, we're all in quarantine. They're keeping us here to stop us infecting the rest of the country.'

‘It's not that,' said Natasha. ‘You're not infected with anything.'

‘Then I'm crazy. My mind's gone, and I'm imagining all of this. In reality, I'm sitting in a padded cell in some nuthouse somewhere, being fed with a plastic spoon.'

‘You're not crazy, either,' said Natasha, ‘but your name isn't Gregory Merrick. You're not the person that the clinic has been trying to make you believe that you are.'

‘Well, hallelujah!' said Michael. ‘Who told you that?'

‘Doctor Hamid. He gave me a long talk the day before I left the clinic.'

‘That's incredible. That's really incredible. I never believed for one moment that I was Gregory Merrick. For one thing I never felt like a Gregory – and besides that I know absolutely squat about marine engineering. I never recognized myself in any of those photographs that my pretend sister Sue showed me.'

He paused while Natasha took a crumpled tissue out of her coat pocket and wiped her eyes. Then he said, ‘So … if I'm not “Gregory Merrick”, who am I?'

Natasha sniffed and blew her nose. ‘Your real name is Michael Spencer. You're thirty-one years old and you're a soil scientist.'

‘
At last!
' said Michael. He felt as if he were checking his lottery ticket and all his numbers were coming up, one after another. ‘That makes
so
much sense! I know all of this stuff about erosion and landscape and soil chemicals, but I couldn't understand how. So where do I live? Where's my family? What's my background? I can't believe this … it all totally fits together. It's amazing.'

Although Michael was becoming so excited, Natasha sounded more and more miserable. ‘Your dad and your stepmom live in Madison, Wisconsin,' she told him. ‘That's where you grew up.'

‘My stepmom? What happened to my mom? Were they divorced?'

Natasha shook her head. ‘Your mom died when you were seven. She had cancer.'

Michael suddenly thought of sitting in the back of the car on Fonderlack Trail, feeling so sad that he could cry. That must have been when his mother passed away.

‘OK,' he said, ‘that makes sense, too. Come on, Tasha, please don't get so upset. Do I have any brothers or sisters?'

‘You have an older sister, Jennie. She's married and she lives in Wauwatosa. You graduated from the University of Wisconsin and worked for a company in Sheboygan for two years but then you got a job in San Francisco with Kennedy Jenks Consultants. Which is where you met
me
.'

Michael wrapped his arms around her and hugged her. Although her dark blue coat was so thick, she still felt painfully thin. ‘Come on, Tasha,' he told her. ‘Everything's going to work out fine. I just don't understand why the clinic wants me to believe that I'm somebody else. What's the point of it?'

‘The point of it is …' Natasha began, but then she tightly gripped the lapels of his overcoat and pressed her face against his chest and he heard her making a high, keening sound in the back of her throat.

All he could do was hold her close and wait for her to recover. As the sun rose higher the fog was beginning to shine, and the two of them were surrounded by radiant gold, as if they were standing in Heaven.

After a few moments Natasha looked up at him and her face was a mess of tears.

‘You're dead,' she said.

‘Excuse me?'

‘You're dead, Michael. We crashed on the interstate on the way back from seeing my sister in Seattle, and you were killed.'

One corner of Michael's mouth began to lift up in a smile, but then he stopped smiling.

‘I'm dead. I'm breathing and talking and walking about and eating food and drinking wine and making love, but I'm dead.'

‘Yes, Michael, you are. And that's why you can't leave Trinity. You can only continue to breathe and talk and everything else so long as you stay here.'

‘Tasha, I am patently not dead. How can I be dead? That accident was nearly three months ago, and if I was dead, I'd be rotten by now. You wouldn't be able to get near me, for the smell.'

‘It's the mountain, that's what Doctor Hamid told me.'

‘The mountain? What are you talking about?'

‘Mount Shasta. It's one of the most powerful sources of spiritual energy in the country. Even
you
told me that, just before we crashed. They built the clinic here, and the community of Trinity here, so that they could use that energy. If you stay close to Mount Shasta, no more than five or six miles away, you can go on living even when you're dead.'