Opening my eyes, I see that Seb’s back again in his chair. He catches my gaze and swills his glass sadly. Rory comes now tapping at the windows of my head. He wants to come inside. I can fight him back for now, but not for much longer. I clamp my eyes and a giddiness takes me over so that I feel as if I am trapped in an eddy of swirls.

Time slips from grey into deep black. The hiss of a stylus on a loop shakes me from the images flickering in my eyelids. I open them with a start. The night has fled. It is early morning. Seb is curled up on the sofa. I roll as quietly as I can on to the floor and then tiptoe out of the room.

In the bathroom I scrub myself with soap and a trickle of water, crouched in the bathtub. When I come back down, Seb is still sleeping, so I creep quietly out of the front door. The world in here is cloying but when I get outside the pavement has a light dust of frost that crunches as I cross it. Cool air in my lungs shakes the sleep from my body as I walk.

Rory, who has been holding on by the fingernails, has flown away. There is a difference in the two worlds, his and mine. A difference in substance, physics. He doesn’t have the physical strength to hang on to me when I am moving. Even slowly. But he can fill my mind when I am inside and boxed in.

Grace now comes directly in view – just a shimmer. I stop and try to look at her but she is too insubstantial. But I see her smile, her eyes hollow. You, she points at me. It’s you she seems to want to tell me. I smile back at her. I nod.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘Me.’ And she becomes air again.

I walk, aiming for the Horniman grounds once more. That’s why she has appeared. She is calling me there so that we can talk this out. Me and her. She is calling me so that we can untangle it together, the thing that has been tugging at my brain.

Seb lied to me. I’m less sure about his motivation than I was last night, mixed as it was with his warmth and whisky. Was he just trying to confirm my suspicions? I don’t think so any longer.

I walk through the main entrance since it is daytime. There are no walkers or visitors at this hour, though. Only a few pigeons, grubbing for food, and me. I make my way to a sheltered spot I sometimes sleep in. My feet are fleet. The air carries me.

Ariel didn’t break in, did he? Grace says this but not with her mouth. It is all with a look.

He didn’t.

Seb lied.