Anyway, Highgate. Dark as misery. And it’s some time not far off eight p.m. It’s cold, I know that much. It rained earlier in the day and the piles of raked leaves have formed a slimy mulch at the edges of the overgrown paths. There’s a muddy gravel beneath the soles of my shoes, but I can promise you I’m barely making a sound as I pick my way towards the moss-slimed tomb at the apex of two twisting paths. It’s half covered up by overhanging branches that dangle down from the nearby elm. This is the oldest part of the cemetery and the headstones stick up haphazardly; the writing obliterated by rain and lichen and time. There’s a body of a Ripper victim somewhere nearby, the headstone paid for by public subscription. Guilt, I reckon. We’re good at that, the British. We’ll let people suffer the torments of Job while they’re alive, but we’ll make a bloody great fuss of them once they’re six feet under. It’s a spooky sort of a place to be on a cold, blowy night, especially when you’re not yet feeling yourself and you’re doing something that you know, in your bones, you shouldn’t really be doing. I keep turning the shadows into people and the people into monsters. Every tree root is a serpent, each creeper intent upon fastening around my ankle and tugging me into the soft, meat-scented earth. It feels as if I’m walking deeper into darkness; as if I could turn back towards the hazy lights of the road and find that every last one has been snuffed out while my back was turned.