From where Petra was lying, she could see the stubby dark-wood legs of a squat armchair and a foot squeezed into a gold slingback. Although the toenails had been pared and freshly painted, the foot was callused and worked, squeezed uncomfortably into the ill-fitting high sandal.

Petra’s cheek was pressed into the thick emerald-green carpet – an acrylic prickle over the skin of her face and, yes, over the rucked white shirt that exposed her belly. A chemical tang up her nose. White dust like concrete or talcum at the roots of the pile, circulating into her lungs as she breathed. She tried to move, but for too long she found it hard to coordinate her limbs.

As she tried to move her head to look around her, the woman leaned over, stretching her hands into the frame of Petra’s vision. Armfuls of bangles – beaded, native silver, Tibetan string ties, hand-painted fabric; nothing suited to an evening ball – cascaded down her arms, gathering at the strong wrists, but oddly, where there should have been a loud jangle peppering the silence, the accessories whispered down like cotton against cotton. Again, Petra tried to move her head to look up to the woman’s face but she could barely grunt out a twitch of her neck.

But her right arm was stretched out ahead of her body, and if she just tried, she could touch the woman’s reaching hands. The woman bent further down and her fingers came to Petra’s. They should have touched there, Petra should have been able to grip on and be pulled, but somehow they missed, maybe because Petra’s right eye was squashed into the carpet and she was getting her depth perception wrong.

Once more, the woman reached for Petra’s hand and grasped fresh air. She sighed, a heavy sigh weighted with immense sadness. Petra could feel the icy breath plunge onto her face. She straightened in her chair and drew her hands back.

‘Help her up,’ the woman said.

Someone squatted over Petra as she lay, squatted down and hauled her up under her armpits. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said as he drag-lifted her onto an overstuffed leather couch, ‘you’ll feel better soon.’