When must I have switched on the immersion heater to make the water so hot? I couldn’t recall the last time I had, which might suggest I’d done it in my sleep, unless somebody had meant me to be injured, perhaps disfigured. I leapt out of the bath to crane around the vicious onslaught of water and ease the hot tap nearly shut. Steam rose from the bath, clouding the mirror on the cupboard by the sink. As I cleared the glass with a thoughtless gesture I remembered the moment at my aunt’s when I’d revealed a trespasser behind the condensation on a mirror. This time I’d uncovered nothing of the sort, but as my wrist snagged the corner of the mirror the cupboard door swung open, and a grinning face swelled out on a neck like the elongated tube of a balloon.

I staggered backwards and barely saved myself from overbalancing into the bath, where the water that had gathered might have scalded me or worse. Had this been the plan? When I recovered myself I saw the cupboard contained nothing unfamiliar. “Playing games, are we?” I said but felt it best to keep any further challenge to myself.

I let the water out of the bath before stepping in. The mundane action left me feeling trapped between the uncanny and the banal, unable to engage with either. One idea let me believe my behaviour had some purpose: I needed to get ready to go to my office. The bath felt perilously slippery under my bare feet, and I clutched at the handle on the tiled wall once I’d brought the shower up to a timid temperature. If I lost my balance I felt certain I would fall through the glass panel beside the shower – if a face were to thrust itself out of the water into mine. I finished showering as soon as I could, and as I clambered out of the bath a face sprang at me from the cupboard on the wall. My shoulder slammed against the glass panel before I grasped that it was my own blurred face in the mirror.

The realisation didn’t stop me feeling spied upon. As I dried myself and dressed I had to restrain a compulsion to challenge the watcher. I was afraid that acknowledging its presence would invite some worse intrusion. Even breakfast felt composed of threats – the water bubbling in the percolator, the red-hot interior of the toaster. How easily could I be tricked into injuring myself with them? I had a growing sense that I would need to be constantly on guard for the rest of my life.