So, I was in this other world, when, all of a sudden, I began to feel my body again. First of all, my fingers. My fingers became real again – I felt a horrible tingling. You know, like at night when you’ve slept too long on your arm, you feel as if you’ve got a piece of dead wood at the end of your body, your hand doesn’t respond any more and you just have to wait for the pins and needles to pass, for the blood to start flowing back. Sometimes it tickles a bit; sometimes it hurts so much that you feel as if your arm’s going to die. Well, I began to have this permanent sensation of fingers dying in a fire, being pricked by millions of pins and needles. Then I started feeling the same pain in different parts of my body, and I realized I was going to have to grin and bear it. Gradually, I got used to it. Or is it that it just became less intense? I’m not sure. What I was certain of, though, was that my body had woken up but couldn’t move. Even though I concentrated as hard as I could, even though I instructed my eyelids to open, my hand to move, my tongue to wag, nothing happened. It was driving me nuts. I started to cry. To yell. In my head, of course. I was in a prison and I was alone. After battling for hours and hours (days?), I went back to sleep, I think. Then I woke up, I think. Then fell asleep again, I think. I’ll spare you the details, but I think this little game went on for quite some time.

Then something weird happened. I heard someone talking. At first it was a vague, distant sound. I seriously started wondering whether I’d arrived in a beyond that neither Mum nor I had ever believed in. Then I said to myself that it was strange to welcome newcomers with, ‘Have you done room 405 this morning, Brigitte?’

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. That’s how people react when something crazy happens in an American TV series. In text-speak, people say, OMG. So I think I can hear OMG OMG OMG OMG all around me.

What conclusion should I draw from that?

Conclusion number one: I’m in room 405, or not far from room 405.

Conclusion number two: there are two people nearby, one of whom is a certain Brigitte. I don’t know any Brigittes, apart from the band that sings ‘Battez-vous’ – ‘Fight’. Was it a message, telling me to hang in there? Pretty complicated, if it is. Am I going to be entitled to a little private concert? I doubt it.