At the top of the ladder is a steel platform. Once I’ve climbed onto it, the platform itself becomes a grassy lawn that surrounds me. A starry sky vaults overhead. The only feature is a ginormous beech tree with low, spreading branches – a storybook tree. Its leaves make shuffling sounds in the gentle breeze.

Still no sign of Martin Elstree. The only living creature I can see is a sparrow, hopping and fluttering in the grass.

‘Very funny,’ I say. ‘Little bird. Or should I say, Little Bird?’

But Martin doesn’t answer. And the bird doesn’t feel like him. I almost . . . the bird isn’t very animalian. It’s almost . . . shit, is this a mechanical bird?

The bird looks at me sideways, a knowing look, I think. It doesn’t answer, just flutters up into the lowest branch of the tree, and as it flies bits of metal fall out of it: a rivet, a washer, a spring. I reach up and pull myself into the tree. Its bark is smooth and cool, and it’s easy to climb.

Up and up we go, the bird and I, and I’m surrounded by soft, whispering leaves until I can’t see the ground any more, just the muscular, twisting bole of the tree and the lacework of its branches. I’m as high as I can go; above me, the branches are too thin to hold my weight. The bird makes a series of trilling sounds, not quite a song, but almost as though it is trying to communicate with me.

I move out along the branch towards the bird.

‘What did you say?’ I ask. I’m willing myself to understand the bird. The dream is trying to speak to me and I need to understand.

I lean out as far as I dare and make a grab for the bird. It launches itself off the branch, but I catch it anyway.

I notice two things at once: the bird is hard, lumpy, cold; also, the branch beneath me is moving. The tree is swaying rhythmically. I clench my fist in alarm and the bird shatters in my hand into a bunch of toy-robot parts. With my other hand, I grab a branch and press my body close to the cold bark, and that’s when I realise I’m no longer touching bark. I’m on a horse.

How can I be on a horse?

‘Horse! Hold on, Horse!’

Someone’s shouting at me. Someone very tiny, faintly audible. The horse I’m riding starts to buck. My hands on the reins are cold and stiff. Holding on hurts. What reins? Where the fuck am I?

‘Horse! Horse, you idiot! Wake the fuck up! Horse so help me god don’t move, just wake up now before you fall!’

Fall?