Exclusive copy watches Brand new models. Limited Time Offer. www.splewkll.com 'Because Sorrel has this irritating habit of waking people up by p lling their eyelids open with her claws.' He giggles, and I wonder whether he is serious. The last time we saw each other in this house he was emerging from a period of more than a year during which he'd done nothing but sleep. He showed me a text he'd written, an account of his dreams that had gradually started to make narrative sense. Characters had reappeared, episodes weaving together to form a story in which he was either marginal, or a feeble accomplice to disaster. When it began to seem that his moments of waking were there solely to feed the world of the dream and its inhabitants he'd abandoned the project. Later he takes me upstairs to show me a painting he has done of Sorrel. The stairs run round three walls of the hall, and at each of the two landings there is a window. On the sill of the first window someone has put a pincushion in the form of a cat. I pick it up and feel it rustle between my fingers. It seems to be filled with dried herbs; it has a musty smell. 'By the way, Simon,' Joey says, turning to look down at me from the upper landing, 'be careful to close the door when you go to bed tonight.' 'They're for this evening really,' she says with a doubtful tone, almost of reproach. 'We've asked some people round.' She shifts the biscuits onto a rack to cool, then breaks one into two with a little sigh and offers me half. It crumbles as I eat. 'You'll like them,' she says, and I wonder for a moment what she means. Shortly after, he fell in love with Susan, whom he'd known since childhood - as though he'd opened his eyes and discovered her there, he said - and the honeymoon began. Now he is laughing, his hair lit up from behind like a dandelion clock by the light from the landing window, and I still don't know if he's joking. 'Look,' he said. He pushed his hand through the glass. I waited to see the surface ripple like water, but nothing happened. Tentatively, I reached out My hand went into the shop