“That’s the idea,” I said, feeling as if we’d hastened my demise. I had no time to choose my words, because the traffic lights had halted a taxi outside. Dodging through the barrier, I ran at the automatic doors, only to realise that if they didn’t open fast enough I would smash the glass. Perhaps this was to be a variation on the fatal injury I hadn’t suffered in the shower, and all the intervening events had been contrived to leave me careless. The doors sidled aside just enough to let me through, and I dashed onto the pavement. “Taxi,” I shouted, waving violently as well. “Taxi.”

“I hear you, pal.”

This was both an acknowledgment and a gruff rebuke. The driver’s greying hair trailed over the shoulders of his matching T-shirt, and appeared to have tugged the crown of his squat head bald. With a look that barely rose above morose he watched me clamber into the back. “Can we go to New Brighton?” I said.

“Go anywhere you want long as you’ve got the price.”

I assumed he wasn’t prompting me to confirm I had, though his attention lingered in the mirror before he started the meter. The taxi swung away from the kerb rather too close to a car, and I told myself I was safer here than on foot. Whenever the driver glanced in the mirror as we sped towards the tunnel, I hoped he wasn’t being distracted in order to put me in danger. The tunnel shut me in with dimness, and I wished I could be sure where he kept looking – at me or the road behind? Surely if he saw I’d acquired a companion from the dark he wouldn’t stay as silent as he was. I couldn’t see any intruder, even when we emerged into daylight. Once we were past the pay booths I said “Up the ramp and second exit from the roundabout.”

We were on the roundabout when the taxi swerved into the adjacent lane, and a lorry roared behind it like a dinosaur. “Make your mind up, pal,” the taxi driver said.

I thought he should have directed the reproof at himself. “What did he do?” I asked instead.

“Not him, pal, you. Which way do you want?”

“The way I said. Towards New Brighton.”

We veered back into the inner lane and raced around the roundabout while the driver objected “That’s the thing you said first.”

I stared into his eyes, though willing him to keep his attention on the road. “It’s all I said.”

“Don’t be having a laugh, pal. Nothing wrong with my ears,” the driver said and swung the taxi off the roundabout at speed. “Then you told me to go the other way instead.”

Although I knew that no response would be any use, I couldn’t help retorting “Did it really sound like me?”