‘Did you say a tulip concierge?’ I’m shocked that she’s been in the Dream City. I’d assumed it was my place, part of my psyche. The idea of a client going there feels out of order to me.

‘Yeah, I know, so stupid, you probably think—’

‘It’s fine, just carry on, Mel. What happened then?’

‘Well, somehow in all the confusion I found I had the score I needed in my hand – it was Debussy – and the Creeper gave me a shove and I fell off the edge of the scaffold, and he shouted after me, You’re weak. What makes you think you can survive in high places?’

‘And then you kept falling?’

‘Yes, but I woke up before I hit the water.’

‘Well, obviously he’s lying to you. You’re not weak, you’ve earned your success. I hope you know that.’

‘Thanks. I have no idea what part of me could be undermining me so much. I feel ashamed that I have such bad thoughts about myself.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ I tell her. ‘We all have cultural introjections. We absorb messages from our environment without even knowing it, and they get assimilated into us and cause trouble. Can you describe the guy to me? How old, what did he look like?’

‘That’s part of the problem – he was wearing a mask. It was a white plastic mask, really shiny, but it had no eyeholes and the whole surface of the face was covered with these chemical symbols. You know like in organic chemistry when they diagram molecules and they have the element and then the little lines connecting each element to the others? One line for a single bond, two lines for a double bond . . . I could draw it for you.’

‘No need,’ I say. I was rubbish at chemistry in school. The fact that Mel knows what a double bond is means that she must have studied it at some point, which makes her even more freakishly perfect, like a Miss World contestant. During her gap year she probably built an orphanage using eco-sustainable materials.

‘Just one more question. Do you dream in colour?’

‘Oh, yes, definitely.’

‘Can you recall if the Creeper was in colour? Or was he in black and white?’

I’m off-script now, but the talk of the Dream City and the mask makes me remember my own dream in the hotel laundry cart. The people sleepwalking into the river.

‘No, he was definitely in colour. He wore green trainers, I remember that clearly. I have an excellent memory.’

‘I’m sure you do.’ I write down Chemistry mask. It might be something from the pop culture symbol base. Everybody knows Jason and the hockey mask from Halloween, even if they’ve never watched those old movies.

‘So what about other dreams? Is this the only one?’

‘There are variations. He only stole my music in the first one. But all of them are set high up above this futuristic city, and in all of them I find I can’t control anything but he can.’