On this Wednesday – a week before Christmas, two days before the end of term, the day after she’d been up until two o’clock making chocolate biscuits and sultana scones for the school’s Christmas party – Irene was on her second showing of Adaptation. She paid for her ticket, bought a small bar of milk chocolate and a cup of bitter, cooling coffee, and went into the auditorium. At first she thought it was empty, then she saw that there was a man in the back row, eating a sandwich and gazing at the adverts which had just begun, and so she picked a seat halfway down and on the opposite side from him. She was methodical and practised. She took off her coat and scarf, and then unlaced her boots and pulled them off too. She turned off her mobile and dropped it into her bag, then sat back in the seat, laid her coat over herself, like a blanket, and unpeeled the chocolate, eating it slowly between sips of coffee. It was warm in here, wonderfully dark, and she knew that Sasha and Clem would be eating lunch in their school hall that smelt of sweat and polish, and that the childminder would have taken Aggie to the play group where she splashed paint on giant sheets of thick white paper and learnt to sing, with all the actions, ‘Three Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed’. Everyone was safe. The music and voices that boomed out from the screen were like a comforting wall between her and the outside world, insulating her from its damp and chilly greyness. Irene waited for the tension to go out of her.

Today, she fell asleep after ten minutes. Nicholas Cage was crouched in front of a keyboard with writer’s block when her eyes irresistibly closed. Her mouth was full of the taste of chocolate and her body was soft and heavy under her itchy woollen coat. The words he was speaking became a drone, as she curled herself more tightly around in her seat, laid her head on her bent arm. She gave herself up; let herself go. She woke at some point to see a man with lank hair and a toothless smile wading along in grey swampy water, and then woke again when loud shots got into her dreams and confused them and her eyes flickered onto a giant, sorrowful face, with tears rolling down his creviced cheeks.

When the credits rolled she sat upright, blinked several times to clear her vision, and stretched, yawning widely. She ran her hands through her hair, pulled her boots back on and laced them up; then she ate the final square of chocolate and rolled the foil into a crooked pellet, which she flicked under the seat in front. You always have to return to the narrow, labyrinthine self from the limitless world of sleep. She pulled on her coat and scarf and headed for the exit.