He lay still as Harmony mumbled quietly beside him, every now and then letting out a torrent of mutterings. This was something she did – talking in her sleep – yelling out as if in surprise then murmuring unintelligibly, her head moving back and forth emphatically, arguing perhaps in her dreams before she finally settled. He listened to the noises outside the flat, the occasional car, a police siren not far away, the faint footsteps and muffled talking of a group of people as they passed the living room window. His mind whirred; he was never going to get to sleep. He eased himself out of bed, careful not to wake Harmony, lifted his clothes off the chair in the corner of the room and crept out of the bedroom. He dressed in the hallway, then took his keys off the hook by the door and slipped outside. Night-rambling, he called it. Walking at night. It was a habit that started when he was about ten or eleven, when one night, unable to sleep for worrying about going back to school, he called for his mother.
