I’m shaking my head. ‘I didn’t . . . I tried, but just when you needed me most, I woke up.’

‘It’s a good thing Charlie woke up,’ Antonio tells her, dabbing at Mel’s shoulders with the edge of the towel. ‘You must have been sleepwalking again.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Her chin is wobbling.

‘There’s nothing for you to feel sorry about!’ he says, and kisses her. I study the complimentary bath products. Free shower cap. Aromatherapy stuff to spray on your pillow to help you sleep. Ha! As if. I shouldn’t mock people with insomnia; it’s just that when you have the opposite problem you feel jealous. I yawn.

‘We will talk tomorrow, Charlie,’ Antonio says.

I want to ask Mel about the Dream City, about how the Creeper tricked her into the bathroom – what the whole experience looked like from her perspective. But she has a deer-in-headlights stare. Maybe Antonio is right.

‘How are you going to get through the rest of the night, Mel?’

Before she can answer, he says, ‘I will sleep in front of the bathroom door just in case.’

‘Oh, I’m not going back to sleep,’ she says. ‘Not after that. I’m going to practice.’

I leave them arguing about it. Then I fall asleep on the Tube and wake up all the way out at Heathrow Terminal 5. Feeling like lost luggage.

* * *

It’s dawn again as I stagger home. O’s previous housemate Jez has picked her up at the Whittington and escorted her back to the flat. Jez is still in the flat, unfortunately, hunching over a tablet with O on the sofa. Jez is wearing a multicoloured hat she knitted herself, a charity-shop pencil skirt and a giant sweatshirt that says Harvard on it. I’m told she went to U of Bedfordshire but flunked out her first year.

‘How do you like this one?’ Jez asks O, clicking through to a photo. ‘It’s the Andy Warhol line.’

The photo shows Jez posing in a pair of wellies decorated with a portrait of Chairman Mao. I go through to the kitchen to make us all a cup of tea. Edgar the cat is hiding behind the kettle.

‘Jez, you do know you have to pay for the rights to use this art?’ O is saying.

‘Yes, but I’m thinking to go in with the V and A. I’m an ideas person. They can put up the investment. They sell postcards and T-shirts with great art on them. Why not wellies?’

‘Darling, I just can’t see the V and A selling wellies in their gift shop—’

Jez lets out a peal of laughter. Edgar runs behind the toaster. ‘It’s online, ducks, online. eBay? V-market? Squirt? It’ll be massive in Japan and all.’

‘Did you just say “ducks”?’ I can’t help myself. Maybe Ducks is a new app I should know about.

‘Oh, hello, Charlotte,’ Jez says. ‘Didn’t see you there. How’s your business going? O said you had to run out for an important meeting.’