I am in the Green Zone. Mayfair. 42B is pulling me into its field again. I feel rested, better. I am ready for this. Only an hour ago my eyes had opened to a sense of morning in the soil, a beautiful dampness rising from dirt that only dawn brings. That smell. Light was shifting and I rolled from under Seb’s shrub and stretched my limbs, the embers of a dream bumping in my head. All I remembered about it was my hands plunged deep into mud, searching for something. Uncovering something. An unburial. I stopped the thought, reminding myself I had to focus. Ebadi. The name repeated in my head until I knew I had to come back here.

I walk past the house, scanning it for signs of life. There’s nothing. The house is cloaked in silence, curtains drawn. I sit on the steps a few houses away on the opposite side of the road and stare. There’s no sign of building work. But even as I think it, I have an idea, the truth of which rings through me. If I get closer there will be something. There will be dust on the pavement. Drops of hardened tile cement on the step. A rogue blister of grout crusted to a gate post. A splash of wet plaster. Somewhere there will be a spot missed.

I cross the road and my heart begins to drum, the closer I get. I am on the cusp of understanding. There’s bound to be something if I look closely enough. Then I am there at the door itself. I study it for traces of work but the door remains resolutely polished clean. The threshold step is smooth. I run a hand along its surface but there is nothing to give it away. Backing slowly up the path, sweeping every inch, I stoop from time to time and fan my fingers across the surface. But there is nothing here, not a single streak of white or bright.

What has happened? None of it makes sense.

Withdrawing to my step across the road, I turn it around and come to another resolution. Each of these subsequent conclusions is the retreating end of a wedge, each thinner and more fragile than the last.