I was in no way redeemed by this realisation. It had not saved me. It merely showed me that the torrent of lies I had told in my time had eroded through to my core. Everything was a lie. I had forgotten the experience of truth.

The postcard was the only thing I held. My bag had been inside the house, as had almost everything else I owned. (My first thought was not my laptop or family photographs or any of my books, but the fridge and its contents.) Almost everything: I had the contents of my pockets, which included my phone, my wallet and my Oyster card. The bedrock of my ability to function. Wasn’t that supposed to be all we needed – the premise of those adverts in which twenty-somethings in plaid shirts travel the world on their credit card and data plan? Adverts for credit cards and data plans, mostly. I didn’t have a charger or, in all likelihood, a job, so neither could last.

As I walked up the ramp out of Old Street Station, Tamesis chimed. You should update your address information, it said.

‘You have got to be fucking kidding me,’ I said to it.

The column of black smoke was above the obelisk tower of the Hawksmoor church on Old Street, very near the office. That was west of the station – there was no pretence that it might be in Barking. It wasn’t even trying to deceive. And if the cockatoo was real, what else might be?

I was late, but maybe not too late. Even if the meeting had started on time, they could last a couple of hours, and I doubted it would be finished.

But when I arrived in the office, the meeting had already broken up. Or it hadn’t even begun. The atmosphere in the room was all wrong, everything was out of place. My eyes were fixed on the aquarium when I came in, expecting it to be full of people, but only Polly and Freya were in there. Ilse was sitting in her little kingdom, and her posture was unlike anything I had seen from her before: she was sprawled back in her chair, as if very relaxed, but her face was tired and preoccupied. Neither of the Rays were in their own duchy – woman Ray was sitting with Mohit, like they were having a chat, but a bad chat. Eddie was on his own in his stockade, on the phone. Kay was standing at her desk, piling up copies of the magazine. Once she had gathered an armful, she carried them towards the main door, and there she saw me.

‘What happened to you?’ she asked unkindly, before she took in the state of my clothes and face and legs and asked a completely different question, one filled with concern: ‘What happened to you?’

‘My house fell down,’ I said, and the dreaded feeling flickered upwards, and I could not prevent myself from an expression that was almost a smirk. ‘I know that sounds … It’s true.’