I look back at our house and search the upstairs windows for any sign of life. I should turn back, I tell myself. But to what end? Who would I call? The emergency services are stretched past capacity. It would take them hours to respond, if they were to respond at all. And where would it end? If looting had broken out it wouldn’t be long before we were targeted. Before the scenes on television were at our doorstep, taking place in our homes.

Before I’m conscious of making any sort of decision I find myself prying the mesh screen off the back door. I work quickly, bending the metal back and using a small rock to shatter a pane of glass close to the handle.

Inside the taste of stale air greets me. I sweep through the downstairs rooms as quietly as possible. I grit my teeth each time a footstep results in the creak of a floorboard, or I clumsily nudge an ornament, but I find no sign of any intruder. The lower floor of the house seems largely undisturbed.

It’s only when I reach the foot of the staircase that I notice a light moving upstairs. It’s yellow and casts strangely beautiful patterns across the roof, like the reflection of sunlight on water. I grip the carpet and ascend the staircase, dragging my shoulder along the curvature of the wall to steady myself. With my free hand I grope the air in front of me, feeling my way in the darkness.

At the top of the staircase I spot the figure of a woman.

I call out to her. ‘What are you doing here?’

She turns to face me and I realise that it’s our therapist. She stands motionless in the hallway. From the centre of her chest I see the cold yellow light shimmering. I stare into it, mesmerised. I feel the edges of my vision begin to vibrate like piano wire. I feel drawn to her.

She smiles and I remember countless summer nights spent with Phineas catching fireflies in the twilight of our yard. How he would place them into plastic jars and hold them aloft like lanterns, the insects inside flashing to attract prey and partner alike. Their cold light intoxicating, their glow all-consuming.

‘What are you doing here?’ I ask again as the therapist turns without a word and disappears through a doorway. I follow her and watch as she opens another and steps through it. I follow her on and on, through countless doorways. The house expanding before me, twisting itself into an impossible labyrinthian structure.

I call out to her, but she does not respond.

She begins to run and I struggle to keep pace. She stops opening doors and instead begins barrelling into them, driving her shoulder into the hardwood until the frames splinter and the hinges give way. We crash through so many rooms that they become an indistinct blur.

Each time I crash through and fall into the room beyond, I find myself back in the hallway. Each time I break in, I am suddenly locked out. Until eventually I realise that I am no longer chasing our therapist at all, but myself. I see a thousand versions of my own body stretching out before me in a vanishing line, as if I have become stuck between two great mirrors.