‘It’s not so bad.’ Naomi gives me a quick grin, which tells me it probably is. ‘If you don’t want me to come over, then give me a call if you need anything or you change your mind, OK?’

‘Yes, of course, but I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.’

And I am fine. I don’t dream that night, and even after getting up four times with the baby, when Rav goes off to work the next morning, dropping a kiss on my cheek, I feel positive. It’s not until I have dropped Mina at preschool and returned to the house that my doubts start to creep in.

I feed the baby, finally starting to feel as though I am getting used to having him attached to me at all hours of the day. He goes down for a nap and I sneak downstairs, wondering for a brief moment if he sleeps too much. Should he spend so much time asleep? Do I remember Mina sleeping this much? Worry gnaws at my gut, and at the bottom of the stairs, when I pause and turn to look back up towards the landing, I am swamped by a feeling of déjà vu. The image of the moonlight puddled across the landing fills my mind and my heart starts to knock hard against my ribcage. There is that claustrophobic feeling again that something awful has happened, something dark and overwhelming. I feel grubby, as if the dream has left some kind of dirty, oily stain on my skin that I can’t scrub out, and I have the urge to wash my hands, to scrub them until my nail beds are sore and my knuckles bleed.

Feeling shaky and sick I walk into the kitchen, reaching under the cracked, old butler sink for a clean cloth and a bottle of bleach, directing the urge at the house instead of my skin. I’ll clean until I stop thinking about it. I scrub at the sink, the draining board, the work surfaces, even thinking about wiping over the old horsehair plaster walls, the only thing stopping me is the fear of the plaster coming away completely. I finally stop when sweat beads my temples and my throat is scratchy and dry with thirst. Taking a moment, I pour myself a glass of cold water from the tap, letting it run for a few minutes to make sure it is as cold as possible. It is unseasonably warm for May so making sure the baby monitor is at full volume, I open the back door and, clutching my glass, step out into the sunshine.