Automatically reaching inside my bag for a cigarette to steady my nerves, my hands brush against the packet. As I pull it out, even in my confused state, I know something isn’t right. Where are my trainers? Rummaging inside the bag, as if something might suddenly appear from the emptiness, I feel my heartbeat strain in my chest. The shoes aren’t there, and neither is my purse.

Holding the bridge of my nose between two fingers, I move towards the kitchen table in the centre of the room that was already small but whose walls now seem to press at me from both sides, and I make myself sit.

Desperately attempting to slow down my mind, to impose some sort of order on the images that move in and out of focus, I have a flash of memory: me on my knees in the undergrowth, scrambling around for the hash, rummaging through my bag. In my panic, I must have knocked the shoes and the purse out of the bag, and not even have noticed before the sound of the woman’s screams sent me hurtling down the hill. The memory hits me like a wave and I stand, desperate to escape it.

Picking up a lighter from the table and inhaling deeply, I move around the bedsit, through the makeshift door into the bedroom area, where clothes and old books are strewn across the floor.

Looking up, I catch my gaunt reflection in the mirror. As if studying something new and confusing, I pull at the knot of hair on top of my head, which has slumped to one side, pinching the skin under my eyes as a car alarm starts to wail in the distance. For a moment I stand there, my senses still heightened, the sound of Camden stirring on the street below.

It is that time when the drugs have nothing left to offer; instead, what is left circulating in my system starts to feed off my body, slowly sucking all the goodness out. I can almost feel myself withering, my vital organs shrivelling.

Come on, I tell myself, willing my mind to come back to me.

Oscar.

His name comes to me like an epiphany and I reach for my phone in the pocket of my shorts before remembering it is dead. A wave of adrenaline kicks in then, as if from nowhere, my mind’s final lunge for survival, and I scrabble together a handful of coins from the counter before grabbing my keys and shuffling down the stairs to the phone box two metres to the right of my front door.