The details always change slightly, but he is always the same. The man dressed in black. Looking up at me as I stare out of my childhood bedroom window, raising his hand to gesture at me to come to him.

Over the years I’ve convinced myself that he isn’t real. He was never real. That I had never seen him outside my dreams, that he had never beckoned me to him, holding one hand up. But sometimes, I wonder. I try to pick out a detail in his build, or his clothes, or the glint of his eyes that will allow me to place him.

For all the good it will do. I can hardly go to the police and decry someone as a murderer because of dreams that haunted me and a memory I no longer trust.

Pulling my hands through my hair, damp with sweat, I glance at my clock again and decide it would be best just to get up. Change my bed sheets. Grab a shower. Wait until it’s reasonable to phone my mechanic and arrange for my car to be collected. If I keep busy, I can push the dream out of my head. I can tell myself that the bogeyman in the black suit isn’t real. And he certainly isn’t coming for me.

‘You’re late today,’ Trina, one of my colleagues at The Chronicle, says, raising her eyes from her computer screen and glancing at the clock.

It’s not as if I’m not painfully aware that I should have been here at least forty-five minutes ago, but it took a while to get through to my mechanic. It took longer to try to feel calm enough to leave the flat and come into work in the first place. This has got under my skin and I don’t like it. I’m not used to feeling rattled.

‘Is everything okay?’ she asks.

I like Trina. She’s one of life’s good people. Our lives are very different outside work – she is married with two young girls – but we each harbour an unspoken respect for each others’ life choices. Still, I can’t bring myself to tell her the whole truth.

‘Car trouble,’ I tell her, pulling my coat off and hanging it on the back of my chair. ‘I had to get a taxi.’

There’s no tremor in my voice and I tell myself that’s a good thing. If I can fake being calm and in control, maybe I’ll actually start to feel that way.

‘Oh, I hope it’s not too expensive to fix,’ Trina says, lifting her coffee cup and nodding towards mine. ‘Do you want a coffee? I’m making one.’

I smile and nod. ‘Yes, actually. I’d really love one. Thank you.’