It was probably something to do with the old wine I’d drunk, but during the night I dreamed I was in the London flat again. This time, I was tucking Daniel into bed, covering over a little foot sticking out from the elasticated cuff of a pyjama leg, when I heard him crying somewhere else. I turned, and when I looked back again, he was gone from the bed. In my dream, I ran down the narrow stairs of that old house, the stairwell that always smelled of beeswax, and out of the front door, following Daniel’s cries through the rain until at last I saw him standing at the edge of a shaft dug deep into the ground, the walls of the shaft strengthened with wire mesh and bolts. Daniel was looking down into the pit. I knew I must not panic. If Daniel heard panic in my voice, if he thought I was angry with him, if he lost concentration even for a second, then he would fall.

‘Daniel, come here, sweetheart, come to Mummy,’ I called, in my dream. I held out my arms. Daniel turned and looked at me, rain streaming down his face, his hair plastered to his skull. His expression was cautious; he wasn’t sure if he was in trouble. He was so close. If I could only reach him, if I could touch him, take hold of the sleeve of his pyjamas. ‘It’s okay,’ I said, ‘Mummy’s not cross; come here, Daniel.’ I crouched, so my eyes were level with his, blinking away raindrops, ‘Come to Mummy!’ He came. I enclosed him in my arms. I felt the weight of him; I smelled the rain on his hair. He put his arms around my neck and his heart bumped against mine.

As I straightened, his legs wrapped around my waist and he pressed his head into my shoulder so I could feel the warm ferocity of his breath. My arms encircled him and I breathed in the smell of the skin of his neck and I thought: Thank God, I’ve got you, it’s okay, you’re safe, you’re not going to fall.

But then I breathed again and my arms were empty and I was there at the building site, rain falling down, lashing down at an angle, puddles of red mud, and the shaft was ahead of me, the world tilting to show me, rain collecting at its base; rain puddling around the little body of—

‘Edie, Edie! Wake up! Wake up!’

‘Daniel!’

‘No, it’s me, Edie, it’s Joe!’

‘Joe?’

I sat up, panting, gasping for breath. I couldn’t see Joe in the darkness of the room, only the negative shape of him; a shadow against the glow of starlight from the window; the moon now risen, a slender, tilted smile drawn onto the sky.