The wind is hurling litter at the windows, and the vibrations of thunder are trembling in my chest. Outside the street is flashing, on and off, as if the neighbours were flicking their light switches in perfect harmony. But the houses are now synchronous only in their silence.

A storm like this comes from a summoning, but not by me. I wouldn’t have, when their hearths are hardly even cold, and the street is still ravaged from before. I don’t look out the window at the ravine in the tarmac, the rift that opened up between me and them, the void into which before has fallen away.

How is it, then, that the gales are now rising and the puddles are overflowing into streams? I close my eyes to try to scent on the air the origin of the storm.

I smell bergamot and honey. That morning. Standing in the empty kitchen in the quiet house in the silent street, dissolving sugar into a cup of tea, hoping it would dispel the taste of dust in my mouth. Suddenly the darkness opened up and I was tumbling down into it – spinning away from solid ground, no way to breathe – eyes stinging from salt and sulphur. I had wished for gusts of air to breathe, soothing rushes of water, blinding light to illuminate every inch of shadow. And all the while – a force of habit – I had been stirring my tea, anticlockwise.

I sit in silence inside the empty house. The cup of tea, undrunk, is cold now. I am cold. I begin to shiver. I am so cold, I am too cold. The world begins to burn.