I look around and see books. Shelves and shelves of them. Not new ones, though, like the ones in Waterstones with their sharp, colourful spines, but old ones with battered leather jackets – oxblood and brown and what was once navy blue but now looks almost black, in this light – their gilt titles dulled from years of warm hands and lingering at the bottom of too many school bags. I look down and see that the wide, scuffed floorboards beneath my feet lead to a large window ahead of me which frames a narrow street that looks vaguely familiar, even in the dark.

Before I can work out where I am, though, two blokes stop outside the window. One is wearing a white shirt with what I hope is a red wine stain on the front and the other is swinging a bottle of champagne. They’re swaying and singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and my shoulders relax again.

It’s still New Year’s Eve.

That’s something.

Wherever I am, I can’t have been here long.

When the blokes carry on down the road, I notice the shop opposite. I know it. I’m in town. I must be, because that’s the weird vegan shoe shop Poppy made me go in.

‘Ashana?’ The girl in the teddy-bear coat is in front of me now. She’s careful to keep her distance, but she’s still close enough to make my hands fist so tightly in the tartan blanket the bones in my fingers ache.

‘Don’t be scared,’ she says.

Of course I’m scared.

I don’t know who she is or how I got here.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to remain calm about that.

Panic licks at my palms, my synapses firing all at once. Question after question after question until something catches light, fear burning everything away until I am left with a single, furious thought.

I have to get out of here.

That’s when I see the door out to the street, but as I am calculating the number of steps between me and it, I hear a bell and it swings open.

A girl about my age sweeps in and I find myself pulling the tartan blanket closer as I wonder if I know her as well. I don’t. Or at least, I don’t think I do.