Suddenly that struck me as funny as well as terrifying – oh my god, was I becoming hysterical? – and quickly I looked back up at the stars, trying to feel the world wide open again. Trying to remember to be invigorated rather than horrified by the way it didn’t care about me or what I did.

I turned down a narrow side path and manoeuvred myself along the cracked concrete until a back door appeared – a torn flywire screen over a plain white door with frosted glass through which spilled a dim but very welcome milky light. In the glow I leaned my memento mori and my backpack against the wall then turned off my phone light and put my phone on top of my backpack. I straightened my hoodie – Nassim’s hoodie – and brought my hands up to smooth down my hair, listening for a sign that any noise I had made had already disturbed them. I pressed one palm to my chest, hoping to magically slow the beating of my heart with hand-pressure alone.

I was just about to step across the square of concrete, gritty with broken glass, to knock on the door, when suddenly the light snapped off.

I was plunged into darkness, comprehensive darkness. My eyes had already been ruined for starlight by the artificial glow, and the sudden pitch of it was so startling, so alien to my city eyes, that I froze, unable to move. And then, almost without me, my invisible hands reached out, my fingers scrabbling urgently against the flyscreen, looking for a handle, finding it and pulling it hard, only to find the door was locked.

And then a something-fear leapt at me, like a snarling dog over a fence, and my heart raced off its mark and I turned the heel of my hand to the screen door and hammered loudly. I stepped back and felt quickly along the wall for my backpack and my phone, and when the face of it lit up I flicked the menu and pressed on the torch and shone it back behind me into the darkness. The feeble light found another shrub-crowded path going towards a faintly lit gate in the distance. Nothing else.

I held the torch there, but still there was nothing. And still there was no sound from inside the house.

I leaned my back against the wall, breathing hard, wondering what I should do, if I should knock again, when a new light came on, further back inside the house. The floorboards creaked, there was a shuffle behind the door and then came a wavery voice with an upward inflection.

‘Who’s there?’ A woman. A frightened woman.

‘Hello?’ I called, stepping towards the door. ‘Hello. It’s Anna, Cathy’s daughter.’

Moments of silence and then the original milky light flicked back on. The sound of a key in a deadlock, a bolt sliding back but the chain still on and rattling as the door opened a crack. A glimpse through the flyscreen of a blue polyester dressing gown, a cloud of white hair, a thin face.