After I pump the tyres, I jump on the bike and set off towards Finsbury Park. Everything feels normal, and it takes me a while to work out that I’m asleep, by which time I’ve forgotten the circumstances under which I fell asleep because it feels like I’ve always been in this dream.

Soon the familiar shopfronts of Finsbury Park give way to the futuristic towers of the Dream City, and I find myself riding along canalside. The river reminds me of the Seine; it even has the same graceful bridges every so often, the same sort of street lamps. But everything is coloured in neon, and there are brightly painted and carved canoes on the water tonight.

Why is it always night in the Dream City? Even in the day, it’s night. Weird.

I huff and puff, pedalling. The Dream City is greener than London. It’s got more cyclists than Copenhagen, but fewer than Hong Kong. Most of them are much faster than I am and they overtake me. Soon I find myself in a peloton of cyclists, all helmeted and anonymous – I can’t even see their faces through their visors. Suddenly I feel threatened. There’s no railing, and if someone ran into me I’d go right over the edge of the canal. The riders crowd close around me and I begin to wobble. I look for a way out of the peloton, but I’m totally surrounded.

Then I see that one of the riders is different. A woman comes alongside me in an evening gown, no helmet. Her long, black hair is elaborately plaited and flies behind her in beaded chunks, and her hands are ungloved. The nails are painted. She is wearing heels. She keeps riding too close and trying to talk to me.

‘You aren’t on your bike,’ she says in a deep voice that reminds me of O’s friend Lorraine. ‘You’re asleep.’

‘I know I’m asleep,’ I shout back. ‘This is a dream.’

But she doesn’t seem to hear me.

‘Girl, are you high?’ she says. ‘I can’t keep up with you much longer. Just come inside.’

‘I can’t. Look – the others are blocking me off.’

There are dozens of other cyclists. They make an enormous noise, and a wind. It’s like a racetrack. I wobble, trying to stay out of the river.

‘You’re going to get hit. Charlie, come on! Come inside!’

Behind me, there is a big noise, a sound of booming and squealing and a blast of half-music. I turn and see a battleship coming out of the river, its hull looming over me. I’ll be crushed.

My fellow cyclist leaps off her own bike and tackles me. We fall in the water, together, and the ship rides up onto the pavement, and I hear the sound of breaking glass.

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