Drank black gin and went back to Moo School. Speckled sabres…shafts of dull, onion-coloured light drifting down from the air-vents above. The smell of rust and dead pigeons. Everything tastes flat now; everything is broken and useless. Mummy, please come home.

Your name, in white, is written in two dimensions across my vision, but why can’t I see you? Smudged mascara, an amber pool of cough syrup on the kitchen table. Spilled salt and pesto salad. Lucifer in espadrilles.

“Whose eye is that?” she asked, peering quizzically into the thickening gloom. But my voice had escaped, so I had no easy answer. Outside, the streets were empty and all the trains had departed. Old dreams abandoned, like empty boxes, for the dustmen. A fire broke out on the third floor and grown men screamed for their mothers.

But they never came.