I felt panic rise inside me, but I had to stay calm. I took a deep breath. Focus, Jacki, focus. He moved away from the car and over a low stone wall. We followed as he trudged along, occasionally letting out a grunt or a sigh. I couldn’t stop looking at the arm. We walked through unkempt grass for a long time, then the dream seemed to fast-forward – the surroundings suddenly switched, and we were standing beside a barbed-wire fence. The grass was so long that it almost reached my knees. I looked around, but the man was nowhere to be seen.

‘Where’d he go?’ I said. She didn’t reply. She smiled and completely ignored my question, as if I’d never said it. I squinted my eyes, searching for him in the distance, but all I saw was blackness.

‘Let me take your picture,’ she said. This startled me; I hadn’t expected her to speak. Her voice was strangely similar to mine. She looked young too; she couldn’t have been much older than me. She held up the Polaroid camera and I stepped backwards, smiling awkwardly. The flash blinded me, sending little coloured dots dancing in front of my eyes. Then I heard something in the distance, a siren maybe. I suddenly felt dizzy and stumbled a little. Something was wrong. I felt the ground tremble, then the grass started to move under us like waves. I struggled to keep my balance, bracing myself for a fall. This can’t happen, I thought. I had to focus. I looked over at her; she was still smiling. She looked so calm, as if this was completely normal. I started to panic when I stumbled again, my hand narrowly missing the barbed wire. The dream was closing in on itself. The sky plummeted, stars dropping like bombs beside our feet. A sound from the outside was threatening to wake me up. It wasn’t a siren I’d heard, it was my phone alarm. The dream was ending too soon. There was more to come, I was sure of it. I knew I didn’t have long left, so I took one last look around, but everything was in chaos. As it all collapsed around us, she whispered.