She takes out her palette and brushes which she keeps meticulously clean and rolled away safely in their canvas sleeves. There is something almost religious about untying the frayed green ribbon and slowly unrolling the fabric to expose the brushes, some so worn the varnish has whittled down to the wood. They’re tatty, but they’re hers, and they tell a thousand stories of her life when she used them back in art school, when Andreas was alive. She takes the palette knife and starts mixing the colors, always adding dark to light, like she was taught. Maybe that’s her problem, she thinks; she always adds dark to light, in life and in her dreams.

Again, she thinks about telling Olivia everything, at least everything that happens in her dreams. She doesn’t have to say that the dreams that torture her are real, visceral memories, scorched into the neuropathways of her brain. The irony, Elisabeth thought, when once, years ago, she learned that morphine, the medical derivative of opium, was named after Morpheus, the Greek God of sleep.

Elisabeth places the brush back into the canvas sleeve. Harder than intended, she puts the palette knife down in its holder on the easel, sending the sparrows scrambling into the air. She walks back down the stairs and along the corridors, all empty; it’s just minutes until lunch time and most residents will already be waiting in the dining room for the unveiling of the buffet. She sees Olivia through the glass pane on the door, typing away on her computer at the desk. When she knocks on the door, Olivia looks up and smiles when she sees her.

‘I’m sorry, you’re probably busy. Umm. I could come back another time if that’s better, or, like, if you’re not the right person to talk to about this, just say, and—’

‘Now is fine, Elisabeth. My afternoon is wide open today.’

‘Oh. Umm, okay.’

‘What’s on your mind?’

‘I thought maybe I should tell you about what happens in the night. The dreams I have. Or dream, really – it’s almost always the same one.’ She pauses, trying to find a way to describe what happens to her when Villa Vinternatt settles down for the night, purring with tired, sated humans. Her anxiety at dusk is visceral. Her skin starts to itch, the same way it used to when smack was leaving her body. Her senses bombard her with panic, and she has the sensation of drowning, gasping for air. She’s endlessly tried to create a routine to relax, but nothing works; it’s the same story, the same recurring nightmare, every single night.