That’s not what I’m after now, though. What I’d like now, is a little luxury for a while. A decent base for a few days, while I work out what to do next. I barely notice the car speeding down the wide boulevards, swinging hard around the corners. I’m already thinking about a long soak in a scalding, scented bath – taking some time to cleanse my soul. I think it’s about time. I laugh a little, remembering something that Carrie said – her fearful flashback to the nomadic festival, and what the shaman said about me. I’d brushed it off as nonsense, but what he’d said was true. I am not a nice person. There is something fundamentally wrong with me.

My parents tried to fix me when I was young – they could tell early on that I wasn’t following a normal developmental path. But when the counsellors failed, my mother gave up on me. I tried to change then, realising my mistake – realising I was invisible to her, and that I’d taken things too far – but I found out it’s not that easy to change, and maybe it’s right to say I was born, not made.

We pull up outside a glittering façade, but when I climb out of the car, I see that the gold is flaking in parts and the stairs are scuffed – and the doorman, when he arrives, is wearing a suit that is shiny at the knees and elbows, frayed at the cuffs. Perhaps this is not the right place after all.

‘Two thousand rubles,’ says the bored-looking driver. I hand over the money, even though I know it’s too much, and head up the steps. Inside, the lobby is as I expected – it was once opulent, but now it is faded and tired, but at least the receptionist is a little livelier than the one in the last place.

‘Privet,’ I greet him, my accent as perfect as I can make it. ‘Do you have a room, please?’

He smiles at my Anglo-Russian attempts and taps on his keyboard. ‘We have only the Lenin Suite available, I am afraid. It is very expensive.’ He cocks his head to the side in a slightly pitying, slightly patronising manner. I get it now. I’d forgotten about the state that I’m in. My filthy hair and clothes, and the battered rucksack.

Then I remember an article I read, about Anna Delvey the fake, possibly Eastern European socialite, who managed to trick the best hotels in New York into letting her stay for as long as she wanted, charging everything to her room, telling them she was waiting for a business deal to go through. ‘Fake it until you make it’, that’s what they say, isn’t it?