My phone pings: the taxi is here. I put Freya’s driver’s licence into my bag. My back wrenches as I lift Charlie from the sofa. He is like a dead weight in my arms. Outside, I lock the door behind us. It feels as if I am locking us out, as if we might never return here again.

The taxi is waiting just down the steps, in the street below us, its engine growling. I open the back door and set Charlie in, pulling the seatbelt and fastening it round him. I get in the other side. The clock on the driver’s dashboard says it’s almost 5 a.m., the last hour of true night, the point when you know that dawn is not far away.

The driver repeats the address I have given him and I nod to confirm it. The smell of me, the sweat from my clothes, seems to fill the whole of the car. Charlie is awake now, alert. He doesn’t ask me where we are going, though, not yet. Maybe this seems to him like nothing but an extension of his dream. Maybe to him none of this seems real.

The taxi slides away from the kerb and we are off. It is warm in here, womb-like, with the radio turned on low, a soothing babble, the soft seats, the dark outside as we glide along the streets. The gentle rocking is so soothing.

I could sleep, I think suddenly. I could just go to sleep and not wake up for days. Maybe that is all I really need. To sleep, and let my brain become whole again. I let my eyes close, but they won’t stay shut, they jerk back open, like every other time I have tried.

If only, if only I could sleep. I press my hands to the side of my head, as though I can crush my mind back together, make the pieces join up again and work. Beside me, Charlie stares out of the window, watching the city flicker by. ‘Where are we going?’ he whispers now. I am sure that he has stopped shaking.

‘To visit a friend,’ I tell him. ‘A friend who will help us.’

Just the thought of it brings a strange peace to my mind.

The lights outside are mesmeric as they glide by. We are heading east, an area of the city I rarely go to. The sky above us is still pitch black, but not for much longer. I keep telling myself that. Not for much longer.