Now as I rose, the boards creaking under my weight, I saw a strange spread of water on the carpet slipping down like fingers, touching a new stair and another, and another. They were talking more quietly, their voices masked by the music, but I caught the occasional word or phrase from Lorelei. ‘Rome’. ‘Absolute madness’. ‘It was so very dull, but the …’

The carpet was soaking now; each footstep into it sent a little flurry of dampness down to the next stair. And finally I reached the top of the staircase, where a cold draught seemed to swirl around. In front of me was a bedroom door, open just enough to let a blade of light escape; as I watched, it began to move back slowly, pulled by an unseen hand. Wind rushed through. Without warning, it flew away from me, crashing against the wall. The air caught in my chest as I waited for an accusation against me and my unwanted presence. A humiliating dismissal. A sneer.

But all I saw was an empty room. No one stood in the doorway to push me out or to smirk at Nick’s betrayal. The room held only furniture covered in dust sheets – a box room of abandoned things; and it was the wind through an open window that was sucking the door open and closed in that five-second rhythm. Through the gaping window I could see one of the new tower blocks topped by the hammer and compass, ready to house families harried out of their tumbledown slum homes. The door slammed shut again, leaving me staring at the blank wood.

Behind me, I heard Lorelei’s laughter once more. Gentler than before, but with an undertone that suggested something more … more what? Selfish? Lascivious? It was coming from the door opposite and water was spilling out under the door – it must have been the bathroom – to form a stream right down the stairs. ‘More Champagne,’ she cried. ‘Come on, see it off!’

The man laughed and I groped again for the thought that it might not be Nick. The flood ran around my feet, and it seemed that if I stood there long enough I would be worn down by it, like a statue in a river. But I took a deep breath, and decided: to hell with them both.

I grabbed the handle, wrenched it down and threw open the door. For a moment I was blinded by a lamp shining straight into my eyes.

And in my mind, I have only flickers of what comes next: her face in the light; my feet moving swiftly across glittering, shifting water on black-and-white floor tiles; a figure in a mirror.

Then a mist falls. A darkness, like the smog outside. It sweeps in from the edge of my vision, taking over, fading the lines between everything that I can remember, turning it all black, so that around me there is nothing.