It’s the idea of not knowing what’s coming. It felt exciting yesterday – in 2020 – before Daff found those messages, but now it just fills me with a clammy sense of dread. I have no idea who is about to arrive at our place, how I might know them, what I should say to them …

‘Ben?’

Alice snaps me out of this thought by glaring pointedly at the cushion I’m gently pummelling. ‘You’ve already done that one. Twice.’

‘Sorry.’

Chores finally completed, we head back up to the bedroom, where Alice suggests – fairly firmly – that I opt for a blue-and-pink gingham shirt and cream chinos: a combination that makes me look like a Tory MP on holiday.

Once this David Cameron cosplay has been approved, Alice shoos me out again so she can select her own outfit. Without her monitoring my every move, I can finally do what I’ve been dying to do ever since I woke up – snoop through the entire flat and try to piece together the last three years of my life.

If I wasn’t so utterly freaked out, it might almost be exciting. I feel like an amnesiac in a film: sneaking through the apartment digging for clues, reassembling the jigsaw of my past. Like Guy Pearce in Memento. Or a less attractive Goldie Hawn in Overboard.

The first thing that strikes me as I take a proper look around is the almost total lack of Christmas decorations. Mum and Daphne both went nuts with the tinsel dissemination at this time of year, and as a result I’ve spent nearly every December of my life in a house bursting with festive colour. Here, though – just like in Alice’s Paris flat – the only acknowledgement to the time of year is a smallish Christmas tree in the corner of the living room, decorated sparsely with a length of thick white tinsel that could easily double as a feather boa, and a few grapefruit-sized gold and silver baubles. The tree’s general vibe is expensive, stylish and somehow vaguely aloof. If this tree was a human being, it would be Anna Wintour.

The rest of the room resembles a page torn from a glossy design magazine: a minimalist blend of chrome and glass. There are two shallow grey sofas that look like they’ve been lifted from a Mad Men set, and a sleek coffee table with a book full of Banksy murals lying open on it.

The whole place has the feel of a trendy Soho hotel: nice for a cocktail or a posh dinner, but not the sort of place you’d actually want to live.

And yet … here I am.