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pretended not to notice, she carried on speaking.
    “… when they broke the hold of Dream London, when they destroyed the Contract Floor, what do you think they achieved?”
    “They destroyed the contracts. All that land that had been sold to the Dream World.”
    “That’s right. The Dream World no longer owned Dream London.” She sat back in her seat. “So who did?”
    I opened my mouth. I closed it again. I’d never really thought about that before. “The people who used to own it?”
    Therese steepled her fingertips.
    “For the most part. But London is a different shape today. There is land here that didn’t exist before the changes. Who owns that?”
    “… the Queen?”
    Therese pursed her lips and nodded.
    “Actually, that’s probably as good an answer as any. But even so, there are assets in this city still unaccounted for. No one owns them.”
    “Good! Make them common land!”
    “That would be a good thing, wouldn’t it? But this is the modern world, Anna. Nothing remains unclaimed for long. And that’s what’s happening here. The ownership of parts of this city remains unknown. We believe that some of the missing contracts may lie in Dream Paris…”
    I shuddered. Dream London had started when things from the Dream World bought property in London.
    “What do you know about the French Revolution, Anna?”
    “That it was the start of modern Europe?”
    “Good answer. But what about the Communes? The Great Fear? The Reign of Terror? Do you know about those things?”
    “I’ve seen Les Misérables. ”
    “That was much later. Anna, I won’t lie to you…”
    Only liars say they won’t lie to you, only liars think of lying enough to mention it.
    “I won’t lie to you, Anna. What little we know about Dream Paris suggests that it’s a dangerous place. There’s no democratic government there. Rather, they have something called The Committee for Public Safety. A group of people that changes by the month, new leaders denouncing the old and putting them up for execution.”
    I gazed straight ahead. I’d been frightened enough at the thought of re-entering the Dream World. Now I was being told I was going to enter a revolution.
    “The citizens of Dream Paris live in fear of each other. Dream Parisians live in fear of being accused as traitors by their friends and neighbours.”
    “I still have to go.”
    “You know how they show that they’re suspicious of you? They hang burning fruit in the street outside your apartment.”
    I didn’t know what to say to that.
    “It will be worse for you, Anna. You’ll be a foreigner. An outsider.”
    “I feel like an outsider here.”
    “You can be an outsider here and still belong. Anna, I won’t lie to you, if you enter that city, you will find it very difficult to leave.”
    “I’m going to enter that city. It says so on my fortune. Besides, my parents are in there.”
    “Your mother is there,” Mr Twelvetrees reminded me. He’d been sitting quietly in the corner, smiling with complacent cruelty.
    “You’ll need papers to get in, papers to move across the city, papers to leave. The chances are that once you’re sucked into that place, you’ll never get out.”
    “I’ll see my mother.”
    “Do you even like your mother?” asked Mr Twelvetrees. “According to your school records you adjusted to the loss of your parents much faster than your peers.”
    That was a barbed but remarkably astute question. Did I like my mother? The last time I had seen her she was a lush, throwing herself at any man who came by. But Dream London had changed everyone. She never used to be like that. Once my mother had been something big in the city, she’d been a woman not unlike Therese Delacroix, back before the changes had convinced everyone that a woman’s place was in the home. But none of that mattered. At the end of the day, she was my mother.
    “How do you know about Dream Paris?” I asked. “If it’s so difficult to get out, how do you know