For my mother, and for Nicholas

Endless gratitude to my wonderful agent, Clare Conville, to Jake Smith-Bosanquet and all at C&W, and to my editors, Claire Wachtel, Selina Walker, Michael Heyward and Iris Tupholme.

Thanks and love to all my family and friends, for starting me on this journey, for reading early drafts, and for their constant support. Particular thanks to Margaret and Alistair Peacock, Jennifer Hill, Samantha Lear and Simon Graham, who believed in me before I believed in myself, to Andrew Dell, Anzel Britz, Gillian Ib and Jamie Gambino, who came later, and to Nicholas Ib who has been there always. Thanks also to all at GSTT.

Thank you to all at the Faber Academy, and in particular to Patrick Keogh. Finally, this book would not have been written without the input of my gang — Richard Skinner, Amy Cunnah, Damien Gibson, Antonia Hayes, Simon Murphy and Richard Reeves. Huge gratitude for your friendship and support, and long may the FAGs keep control of their feral narrators.

The bedroom is strange. Unfamiliar. I don’t know where I am, how I came to be here. I don’t know how I’m going to get home.

I have spent the night here. I was woken by a woman’s voice — at first I thought she was in bed with me, but then realized she was reading the news and I was hearing a radio alarm — and when I opened my eyes I found myself here. In this room I don’t recognize.

My eyes adjust and I look around in the near dark. A dressing gown hangs off the back of the wardrobe door — suitable for a woman, but someone much older than I am — and some dark-coloured trousers are folded neatly over the back of a chair at the dressing table, but I can make out little else. The alarm clock looks complicated, but I find a button and manage to silence it.