His voice is coming from somewhere near my head. It feels like everything is moving, like my senses can’t figure out which of my body parts is where. I manage to make a sound.

‘Can you move? Charlie, I’m a little concerned about you. If you are able to, try and make a sound again.’

It’s so hard to force myself to do it. I just want to float and drift . . .

‘Charlie? Come on. Stay with us. I know you don’t want to end up in A and E. They’ll stick needles into you and do things to wake you up, and it’ll be very unpleasant. I’m touching your hand. Can you feel that?’

He’s holding my hand. How sweet.

‘Don’t be so poncey, Roman.’ Shandy’s voice, her breath in my face, and now I’m starting to feel my body more. ‘For fucksake, assert yourself. Oh, never mind, I’ll do it.’

Then Shandy slaps me across the face and my eyelids fly open. She’s giving me eyes as wide as an All-Blacks player doing the Haka and her spittle flies into my face with the force of her words.

‘Hey! Guess what? Bernard’s dead. Actually dead. How can you sleep through this? You’re a suspect, but there aren’t even any police. But there’s a dog! He’s so cute. Wake the fuck up!’

I’m on Bernard’s sofa.

‘There’s a dog?’ I say weakly. I love dogs.

‘Nope, I lied. And that, Roman dear, is how it’s done.’

I see her legs and arse receding as she crosses the room to continue her intense conversation with Donato, in which every other word she uses seems to be ‘cunting’. Roman is still holding my hand.

‘I have coffee for you. Can you sit up?’

Nodding, I manage to get vertical. I feel disgusting. I sip the coffee – it’s too sweet and too white, but it tastes better than the inside of my mouth.

‘Don’t talk to him, Charlie,’ Shandy says, and when Roman shoots her a resentful look, she adds, ‘All of us are vulnerable right now, and who knows how this flat has been rigged for surveillance? The only way we can talk is to invoke Cone of Silence.’

Roman starts to laugh, but stops when Rodney the unicorn threatens to headbutt him.

‘It’s an app she wrote,’ I tell Roman. ‘It locks down everything we say, scrambles it.’

Shandy nods. ‘Crude but effective.’

‘I thought you were a furniture designer.’

‘I wrote it to stop my ex-girlfriend stealing my ideas,’ she says matter-of-factly. Then she squirts everybody the code for Cone of Silence.

‘I’m going out for some air,’ Donato says, shaking his head. ‘Enjoy your cone of whatever.’

When we are secure, Roman motions for me to talk.