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I discover that my mother has been plying my nephew with alcohol to make him sleep, which elicits a confrontation that escalates until she grabs a handful of blunt cutlery from the kitchen drawer and begins stabbing me with it. I dodge the jabs and flee to my bedroom intending to leave home (all the time thinking: why am I even here?) I see Hilary outside the white house (Rebecca’s house) at the heel of the cul-de-sac and she wanders over to me. I ask breathlessly if I can stay with her – she agrees – and she walks away.

Upstairs. Wandering through a market-place that features at its centre an art installation recreating the hotel room in which two artists lived in the early 20th Century – a cluttered dressing table, decaying clothing scattered over antique furniture, the pair of them sculpted out of wax, strewn across the bed in the throes of orgasm, or death; forever embodied in a state of rapture. I am overflowing with vicarious pleasure. I cross the ‘room’, a film-set of sorts, out of it and into the bustling market (Kirkgate, Leeds) where a matted-haired woman complains loudly on the subject of Christmas trading. ‘We didn’t leave ‘til 6 on Xmas Eve, and then had only two days off’, so today must be December 27.

An orgy is taking place upstairs in the eaves of the house (familiar to me from an earlier dream in which I inhabited a mansion, widows and staircases multiple and often parallel. I am naked between bodies mostly female like mine. My sister is talking to me as I press myself against these bodies, always close to orgasm but never coming. A body climbs onto my body, I hold the buttocks in my hands, kneading and pulling them absent-mindedly, a voice uttering from the mouth of the body, and my sister asks what I am doing. I cannot answer. Instead I ask: ‘do you know that mum is giving alcohol to Jack every night?’ and she affirms. ‘It helps him sleep’, she says, giving rise to infuriation. ‘The child is an alcoholic,’ I accuse, ‘and it is down to you all’.