I put the phone down, unprop the pillows and let the sheet fall loosely over me. My fanlight window is open and I can hear a police siren competing with a car alarm competing with Mr Alkazi’s alarm at the newsagent’s, which goes off between midnight and three every night. Outside the window there’s a shout for ‘Janine!’ and the barking of a disgruntled dog. The sheet is light and cool, but I suddenly feel draped in dark, dank dread, a shroud of it wrapping round me. Angela, my fun, flighty sister, has escaped. Cherry Lau is now popular and successful, sipping mysterious cocktails in mysterious bars in Shanghai. And I am tethered here with no friends, no one to tell my dark secrets or the dull truth of my life to, and how it is slipping away, day by day, nothing to nothing.

I live with my father but I am as alone as a woman who has leapt to her death under a tube train. I had dreams once, dreams of happiness and fulfilment, long since gone. I had hoped for love, at some point, but that is now a stale joke; a joke first played on me years ago when I loved a man who couldn’t love me back. I am as blind as my father is to the world. I lie in my bed night after night, watching as shadows and slices of light slide across my bedroom window: whites, reds, yellows, greens; the blue of a police car. My view never changing. Never evolving.

I shift my head so it’s on the coolest part of the pillow and go back to sleep.

The next morning, before Dad stirs, I take the Transport for London card from my purse and sit at the console table by the Palladian window. Outside in the world, real people are already busy.

‘Hello,’ I say into my phone, feeling nervous. ‘I’m phoning up about the free counselling session.’

I know, I know – it’s damn cheeky of me. I didn’t see the jumper. I saw nothing, except the crowded entrance to a platform and a horrendous busker. I have not been affected in any way, except giving her life some thought, and wondering about mine. I am taking advantage.

‘Which incident?’ says a voice that could be announcing the next train to Edgware.

Which incident …? My entire life? ‘Er … the jumper on the tube. Northern Line. Warren Street. Yesterday. Wednesday.’

‘In the afternoon?’

‘Yes, in the afternoon.’ How many jumpers did they have?

‘OK. Hold on one moment, please.’ There is a muffling and a shuffling, something that sounds like a cup of coffee being stirred with a plastic spoon and a folder being dropped on the floor. ‘Next Monday, ten a.m. until eleven a.m.; 34 Princelet Street, E1. Press the buzzer for Room B. Do you need a pen?’