If I had known any of this on the morning that I stood before him in his basement bedsitter, complaining about the poor moral quality of my previous incarnation, it is possible that I would have been less determinedly dazzling. I can see now that he really didn’t have to take it from me. He hadn’t even received his cheque from Sharon yet. He would have been quite within his rights to have shown me the door. But the habits of a lifetime of getting things wrong prevailed with him. His confidence was shot to pieces. He took my dissatisfaction with Tommy personally; it was further proof, if further proof were needed, that the cards were stacked against him.

‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Point taken.’

I wasn’t aware that I had made a point. ‘Just put me back to sleep again,’ I insisted. ‘Only this time make a better job of it.’

He looked alarmed by my expectations. ‘I’ll do what I can for you,’ he promised me, sepulchrally, ‘but please remember that I can’t change anything. I can only put you in touch with what’s already there.’

‘I think I understand,’ I said, ‘the limits of your capabilities. Let’s get on with it.’

‘Point taken,’ he repeated, motioning me to sit. He didn’t have an ounce of pride left. ‘Now close your eyes. I want you to listen very carefully to what I’m saying. Your eyes are very heavy. You are floating out into the distance. Your limbs are very …’

‘Yes, yes,’ I interjected. ‘I know all that.’

And that was how I came to be slumped in a hypnotist’s chair once more, floating out into the distance, while that part of me I could no longer call my own was back haring about not my grandparents’ Lodz or Lublin but Dorset – Victorian Dorset – of all God-forsaken places. Don’t ask me what I was doing there: nowhere in the world interested me less. Conscious, I would not even have been able to locate it on a map.