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When I was twenty-seven, my Sleep stepped out of me like a passenger from a train carriage, looked around my room for several seconds, then sat down in the chair beside my bed This was before they became so familiar, the shadow-forms of Sleep in halls and kitchens, before the mass displacement left so many people wakeful at uncertain hours of the night In those days, it was still surprising to sit up and see the silver lean of Sleep, its casual elbows People rang one another, apologising for the lateness, asking friends if they too were playing host to uninvited guests   Sleep was always tall and slender but beyond that there were few common traits Experiences varied – a girl I knew complained that her Sleep sat ceaselessly atop her chest of drawers, swinging its heels and humming, while another confided that her Sleep trailed its fingers down her calves, demanding cones of mint ice cream Couples and cohabiters were the worst off – the Sleeps seemed more prone to behaving badly in numbers, as though they were egging one another on A rumour persisted in my building that the husband and wife in the penthouse had locked their Sleeps in separate bathrooms to prevent them wrestling violently on the carpet A man I knew vaguely from the office told me in passing that his and his boyfriend’s Sleeps kicked at one another incessantly and flicked pieces of rolled-up paper at the neighbour’s Bengal cat My Sleep had no one to fight with and so mostly preoccupied itself with rooting through my personal belongings, pulling out old photographs and allen keys and defunct mobile phones, then placing them like treasures at the foot of my bed   Early on, we didn’t know what it was exactly A lot of people assumed they were seeing ghosts One night in mid-July, a woman in my building woke the seventh floor with her shrieking Two am, dark throat of summer A bleary stagger of us collected in the corridor and were beckoned into her flat in our sleeping shorts and dressing gowns We walked