"I sort of relate it to being in a gallery, I suppose. Looking at paintings, being transported to somewhere or some time beautiful, if not very convincingly."

But what they'd been through had been convincing. Sand speckled on his hands, the frost creeping over window panes, the afternoon sunlight adrift through his sitting room curtains. "Take it for what it is. Why?"

Charles prods at pie. Suspiciously citrusy.