‘Do you think …’ I pick my words carefully and try to keep my voice steady. ‘Do you think that I might have been living this day, every day, for …’ I can’t quite say the number. ‘… a long time?’ I finish lamely. ‘Am I trapped in this day? Do I do the same things every time without realizing?’

I can see from her face that Ariel thinks I do. Her eyes meet mine and she looks away, then back again.

‘Maybe,’ she says. ‘That might be happening. Yeah. I don’t think it makes sense, but none of this makes sense. It might be that … that it’s because no one knows what happened to you, so there was never any kind of closure. So you couldn’t go and do – well, whatever the next thing is.’ Her eyes fill with tears, and I remember that her mum died.

‘Mmm.’ I’m aiming for something profound, but mmm is what comes out.

Ariel forces a smile. I feel my stomach clenching, and even that makes no sense because I don’t have a stomach. It’s a ghost stomach, fake clenching.

I wasn’t normal today. I didn’t go to the loo. Did I eat? I made Dad toast without eating any myself. I probably had lunch at school because everyone did, but I don’t think it tasted of anything. I might have drunk some water. I might not. It’s hard to remember.

‘Shall we see what we can do?’ Ariel’s voice pulls me back to reality, or to whatever this is.

I nod. ‘What, though?’

She takes a deep breath and blows it all out at once. Her hair bounces up in front of her face.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I mean, I’ll do everything I can. I guess I need to find out what happened to you? I’m not sure where to start. But I’ll try, Joe. I’ll try. And maybe you could look for … Actually don’t worry. First of all, tell me everything you remember.’

‘Yeah.’ I can’t remember anything.

‘You couldn’t remember me before and now you can. So more things might come back. When I’ve been here with you before, you look up as if someone’s in the doorway, but they’re not and, when I look back at you, you’ve gone.’ She stares at me with a question on her face, but I shake my head. I’ve got nothing.

‘I’ll try and concentrate on that bit today.’

‘Yes. Do. And maybe you can tell me everything you remember about your day, and anything from the days before it. The old news reports talk about Beachview because everyone knows you came here, but there’s nothing about this room. So already we know something they don’t. We know you came here.’

I nod. ‘And we know I looked at someone in the doorway.’