On my way downstairs I took out my car key and then returned it to my pocket. I mustn’t risk driving while I could be fatally distracted, and I didn’t know if I would ever drive again. I bought a ticket at the station and made for the platform, only to retreat into the booking hall, having seen there was no train. I wasn’t about to risk being thrown under the next to arrive. I’d already felt at the mercy of traffic while crossing the road.

A protracted squeal announced a train, and once it crawled to an absolute stop I ventured onto the platform. Just a few passengers left the train, but I had a sense that somebody was using every one of them for cover, dodging behind them all without ever straying into sight. As far as I could see, which no longer meant enough, the carriage I boarded was deserted. When a woman spoke close to me I started as though I’d been wakened from a dream, though it was only the overhead voice of the train. “In the interests of passenger safety…” The advice to stay alert felt like a grim joke at my expense.

I’d still seen nobody in the carriage by the time the train moved off. When it reached the next station someone looked in from the platform, but didn’t appear to board. At the following station they loomed outside the window again, and I glimpsed the face that was regaining its features, which were all too familiar. Each time the train halted, the gathering figure grew more recognisable, closer to human. I did my utmost to ignore it, especially once the train sped underground, where the face took to swimming out of the dark between the stations and pressing itself like a perfectly flat mask against the glass. It was only trying to work on my nerves, I told myself, to leave me more susceptible to peril. “Childish,” I muttered. “Not even puckish. Not clever at all.”

This didn’t work. It was no kind of spell. The apparition left me nervous of my next encounter once I was off the train. As I rode up to the station concourse I seemed to glimpse it leaping upwards behind scattered commuters on the downward escalator. I couldn’t locate it in the street, where crowds were busy ignoring squatters on the pavement and in doorways. I peered at every seated figure and every supine one to reassure myself their faces weren’t familiar, and before long I ran out of change to drop in plastic cups. I had a vague sense of bidding to buy myself grace, but no idea whether that would work.