I try to sleep again but the bedroom is too warm for me so I come back downstairs, to the kitchen where it is cooler. At the sink I quietly pick up dishes and begin to wash. The window on to the garden reflects the darkness so well that it becomes a mirror. I study my face briefly. There are deep lines there that I don’t see when I picture myself. The hair has grey strands that aren’t there in my mind either. But the eyes. The eyes seem younger than I feel. When I look into them I’m staring into a memory of a younger person. I catch flashes of myself as a child. There’s either innocence still buried in the layers of life or something else. Vulnerability perhaps. I see that boy and I want to hold him.

I need to sleep. The dishes are done and draining on the rack but still I stare at the window. No longer looking at my face but through it into the garden. My hands are pink from soap and hot water but it disappoints me that the dirt has gone. It’s as if I have turned my back on myself.

I need to sleep. The peace I felt from the evening with Seb has burned away like morning mist in the sun. The woman is in my head, clamouring, and I desperately need to get away.

From the window I see that the early morning light is still an hour or so away. The dark sky has that tender, wintry quality, so that the approaching light, when it comes, will seem fractured. I get Seb’s coat and wrap it round my body and slip into the garden.

Some of the chill of the February weather has gone but it is still cold enough to draw fog from my lungs. I crouch at the edge of the lawn, in the shrubbery to touch the earth. It feels cool and comforting. If I don’t sleep I won’t be able to think. I feel my way in through the veil of slowly descending light and pat at the bushes. They are thick here. I crouch down and shuffle my way in, cracking joints as I do. Years of cold have damaged me.

As soon as my head touches the soil and the night settles on my skin, I begin to feel free. Seb, Ebadi, the neighbour, the woman, her face suspended in agony – all of it is far away. Unreal. But I am a person trapped with hands and feet in each of those lives. Blake and Conway both drift away, unenclosed by bricks and walls. Rory, he clings for a moment with Grace and the dollars.

I think of that day decades ago, watching Seb staring into bin-liners of dollar bills. I’d needed somewhere to put it all now that the flat was vacant.