Sometimes she just walked round the house, slightly dislocated by the night-time world she was occupying, where everything was dark and cold, and where time seemed suspended. She’d stand at the door of her children’s rooms for minutes on end, almost in a dream herself as she watched the way their chests rose and fell, the way their lips puffed with each breath, or they made slight, bewildered expressions in their sleep, rearranging their positions, turning their heads on their pillows. One night, as she stood with her hand on the door knob, Sasha started to laugh – really laugh the way she never seemed to in her waking life, as if someone in her dream was tickling her or telling her an uproarious joke. If someone was laughing in their dreams, did that mean they were happy?

It was only when they were asleep that she saw them as completely separate creatures, far from her in their own secret worlds. She would remember how she’d snapped at Clem, held Aggie’s arm so tightly she’d left a red mark, cut Sasha short in the middle of a song, and would feel ashamed of her anger and impatience. Tucking a bear worn thin with hugging under an arm, pulling a duvet back into place, she would resolve to do better tomorrow.

She was back to going to the cinema in the daytime too: Chicago twice, The Pianist, The Hours three times in a row, although the first time she stayed awake all the way through, flooded with sadness, and left the cinema with the restless feeling that she must change her life somehow.

She watched people closely, filing away impressions in her mind: Karen, promoted in her job, became sleeker, shinier; she had glossy hair and glossy lips and the unmistakable sheen of success about her. Her next-door neighbour to the left, an old man who’d lived in Hackney all his life, seemed to have entered a suddenly foggy old age, wandering the streets in his slippers, a vague wispy smile on his folding face. Ruth came in for her lessons with a stony, shutdown face and Irene knew she had her period again. Sasha drew meticulous pictures crowded with tiny people and animals and trees; she stuck matchboxes together to make a miniature chest of drawers that she covered with wrapping paper, putting objects in each drawer – a shell, some earrings, a little pot of lip balm, a passport photograph of herself. And she watched Adrian when he held in his stomach in front of the mirror; when he cried in films; when he bought himself new shirts and hung them in the cupboard secretly, as if she wouldn’t notice; when he started reading novels and listening to Mozart and Brahms instead of jazz; when he pretended to be asleep as he lay in bed.