There is a crash as the roof shatters. The room is pitch-black and I don’t know where I am. Though I’m sitting on the edge of a bed, I don’t know where it’s located. I stand up, and walk carefully to where I think the door is. Holding my arms up in front of me, I grope for the door handle. But there is no door here, only walls, smooth plastered walls. I am shut in, I am incarcerated here, and there is no way out. And I have lost something, something important; I have lost the keys. My heart is banging in my chest and a wave of panic drowns out all rationality. I am a primitive woman buried alive in her cave. Screaming, I bang on the wall with my fists. Then my right hand touches something smooth and warmer than the walls: it’s a piece of plastic, it’s a plastic switch. I flick it and a bright light fills the room, momentarily blinding me.
I am standing in the living room of my house in Kentish Town. Everything is in its proper place. Look, there next to the light switch is the doorpost. Groping in the dark I had missed it completely. Dripping with sweat, I look at my watch. Three o’clock in the morning.
Now it all comes flooding back. Charlie is missing. And Anthony is not here either.
Next I hear footsteps on the stairs. It’s Anthony, running up from the kitchen.
‘Are you OK?’ he asks. ‘I heard screaming.’
‘Is she home?’
‘No, Sally. Not yet. There’s no news yet.’ He puts his arms around me and hugs me; then he leads me back to the sofa. We sit down side by side.
‘I had a dream,’ I say.
‘Tell me about it.’
I recount my dream. It was a variant of the usual. It was a dream about Charlie, about Charlie ten years ago when she was only seven years old. In this dream we were in a beautiful room at the top of a round tower, in a fairy-tale castle. Over our heads rose a high glass dome, through which could be seen a sprinkling of stars and a thin sickle moon that had faintly illuminated Charlie’s face. Suddenly there was a loud explosion, the glass roof cracked and splintered. And Charlie vanished, just like that. She vanished. The room was thrown into darkness, the stars and the moon had gone. And Charlie was no more. Gone in a crash of glass; a shattering sprinkling of glass.
At this moment I hear sounds from the street. A car pulls up outside the house, a car door opens and a few seconds later slams shut. It’s the police; it must be the police, coming to tell me what has happened.