Liam collected me from the Sofitel and together, we drove towards Dulles airport to meet Bots, who was awake, washed, shaved and looking more like the Bottomly I thought I knew. His accommodation had changed. He was now in the Spring Hill Suites Hotel, waiting in the lounge with a good-looking Oona who was dressed in a blue, off-the shoulder blouse and tight-fitting black jeans. It didn’t look to me as though she was in work clothes, unless her work was of a different nature than I’d been told! As I looked around, I caught sight of her staring at me. I had to pinch myself to make sure she was indeed real and the alteration she’d gone through was corporeal, not spectral.
I wasn’t dreaming, but I was indulging in fantasy which was quickly pushed to one side on seeing Liam who, having arrang
