Now I’m on foot, forging through the city towards Centraal station. Bikes whizz, trams clang. I pass through pockets of air scented with coffee, pizza by the slice, sewage, before stopping off at a bank to pull some money out of the wall. I type in my pin then request 200 euros. The machine gives me a large frowny face and a message saying there’s not enough in the account for that. I try for one-fifty and this time get a smiley. Infantilized by a machine, this is what it’s come to. The 08:12 to Haarlem’s on time, so I optimistically buy a single, jump on, watch the scenery, before jumping off at Sloterdijk. From there it’s a short walk to the lock-up that holds the thing that has been keeping me sane these last months, and today is the day when all that work is going to pay off. I hope.

It’s a 1969 Mustang SportsRoof in matt black, which I bought for next to nothing and have been trying to get roadworthy ever since. When I say kept me sane what I really mean is that it’s driven me crazy, but at least it was an externally focused crazy. I’ve scraped knuckles raw whilst trying to unscrew bolts deep in the engine cavity; I’ve banged thumbs and sliced flesh. I’ve also waited weeks for a part to arrive only to discover it’s not quite right, or opened up a pipe to have disgusting, and clearly dangerous, fluid seep over my fingers.

It’s really my therapist’s fault. She’d been urging me to take up a hobby, something using my hands, something to get me out of the houseboat at least once a week. Which all sounded like a pretty tall order, and the thought of trying to find an activity that would fit all those criteria was starting to stress me out, until I passed a used-car place near Stadionplein. I spotted it almost immediately and had a weird out-of-body experience, a kaleidoscopic mash-up of every car ad cliché I’d ever seen. I cruise curvaceous mountain roads with snowy peaks and blue skies, I zoom across a never-ending bridge with a woman sat beside me, hair blowing in the wind, I park with a flourish in front of a modernist building in an impossibly beautiful setting. Of course the woman bears a distinct resemblance to Tanya.

Before I knew it I found myself walking up to the salesperson who’d obviously clocked my altered state and was mentally limbering up for the kill.