She growls and goes to the bathroom to splash water on her face, avoiding her own eyes in the mirror. As always when she wakes like this—not that she ever does, not like this, but from dreams and in the middle of the night—she leaves the lights off in her flat so that she does not wholly transition to a daytime state and find herself unable to go back to sleep. The dark is a welcome one through which she moves with familiar confidence. Bare feet know the gaps between the floorboards, the knotholes and the protruding nail two feet outside the bedroom door. Scuff at it with your heel for good luck or to be sure you’re where you think you are, but don’t tread on it. She touches the frame of the door, hears a murmur in the corridor outside. Late revellers coming home. Through the window, she sees the lights of Piccadilly, the digital boards celebrating something in Chinese or Hebrew, some alphabet she does not know—Hindi, perhaps, or Sanskrit. A picture of a woman against African mountains, then a perfume bottle, then more illegible text. She turns away, into the bathroom.