Anne Billson - Stiff Lips

But I knew, with a heart heavy as suet pudding, that I had to open the bathroom door right now, or I would never feel safe in that flat again. I would have to leave Notting Hill and run back to Hackney with my tail between my legs. Back to a boring, anonymous life in the boondocks.

No, I wasn't going to be beaten.

I gripped the handle, took a breath so deep the air filled my body all the way down into my feet, and opened the door.

The next morning I bought a bag of croissants filled with apricot jam and hammered on Sophie's door. Whole minutes passed before she opened up, yawning and complaining and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes with her knuckles.

'Breakfast,' I said, waving the bag, and before she'd had the chance to frame a reply I'd dodged past her into the kitchen and switched on the microwave.

'Mmmmm not hungry,' she mumbled, groping for the kettle.

That's all right,' I said cheerily. 'I'm sure I can manage them all by myself.'

Sophie shivered and disappeared to look for something to put over her nightgown, leaving me to make the tea and watch over the croissants. When they were ready, I piled everything on to a tray and carried it up to the living-room.

'Sleep well?' I asked as Sophie emerged from her bedroom, knotting the belt of a delightfully simple little silk dressing-gown.

She paused in mid-knot, looking vaguely troubled. 'Not really, now you come to mention it. Bad dreams.'

I'll bet, I thought.

Sophie's eyes suddenly opened wide. 'You were in one of them.'

'Thanks a bunch,' I said.

'You were trying to make me wear the most ghastly cardigan,' she said. 'And I wouldn't. So I ran away.'

It hadn't been quite like that. When I'd finally summoned enough nerve to open the bathroom door, what I'd found in the shadows behind it had not been burglars, nor spiders, nor even one-legged koala bears, but Sophie, perched on the edge of my bath in her white cotton nightdress. Her bare arms looked skinny and vulnerable. Even without the light on, I could see that her skin was tinged with blue.

She had caught up the hem of her nightdress in her hands and was scrunching it into a sweaty little wad, murmuring softly to herself as she did so, nodding earnestly, arching her eyebrows as though listening to a reply, half-smiling, casting her eyes down and fluttering her lashes. It was the perfect portrayal of a woman holding up her half of a flirtatious conversation.

But whoever she was flirting with was in her dreams.

It wasn't the first time I'd caught Sophie walking and talking in her sleep. Once, at school, I'd found her standing by the window, gazing out into the dark grounds with unseeing eyes and muttering, 'I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too…' I'd read somewhere it was dangerous to wake sleepwalkers, so I'd done nothing but watch and listen, and eventually she'd returned to bed of her own accord. The incident had alarmed me, but I'd never mentioned it to her or anyone else, nor had I ever caught her doing it again. Until now.

She looked cold, so I nipped back into my bedroom, looking for something to drape around her shoulders. By the time I returned, carrying one of the chunky cardigans knitted for me by my gran, Sophie was on the move. For an anxious moment I thought we were going to collide in the bathroom doorway, but she swept past, oblivious, and started down the steps, taking them so rapidly I had to scamper to catch up. I was just in time to see a flutter of white nightgown as she slipped out of my front door, leaving it wide open behind her.

I couldn't believe I'd gone to bed with the door unlocked, but there was no other way Sophie could have got in.

I didn't follow her down the stairs. I didn't need to. I knew she wouldn't be going far. I stood there listening to her soft diminishing footfall until I heard the door to her own flat slam shut behind her.

'You can't remember any more than the cardigan?' I asked.

'No, I told you,' she said, wrinkling her forehead. 'Wait a minute.' She was thinking hard. 'Something about a man in a mirror? No, I've lost it.'

I was midway through my second cup of tea, and Sophie had gone down to the bathroom to take a shower, when my attention was caught by the back of a drawing board propped against the wall of the living-room. I went over to check it out, and nearly choked on my croissant. The style was unmistakably Sophie's — all that pernickety detail — but I'd never seen her tackle subject matter like this; it appeared to be the aftermath of some sort of battle between humans and unearthly demons. The humans had clearly come off second-best.

I wondered whether Sophie had been drawing in her sleep, as well as walking and talking in it.

Men and women were sprawled broken and bleeding in the long grass as bird-headed monsters sawed at their limbs or foraged in their entrails with sharp-clawed instruments. Other humans dangled naked and helpless from apple trees as mincing skeletons sucked the marrow from their bones or thrust red-hot pokers into contorted mouths. In the background, herds of razorbacked pigs roamed freely while shadowy beasts capered and pranced around a blazing hut, casting long black shadows over the land.

And, right at the front, a twiglike creature was ramming a spear through the eye of a redheaded warrior.

'What in hell is this?' I asked Sophie when she came up from the bathroom, towelling her hair.

'Oh, that,' she said. 'It's my summer garden. The calendar I was doing.'

I looked at the picture in silence. There was a lot to look at. It almost — but not quite — put me off the rest of the croissants.

As I lay awake in bed that night, I couldn't help thinking about Sophie's garden — the men writhing impaled in thickets of thorns, or trapped up to their waists in quicksand while rats and vipers gnawed on their upper bodies — and worrying that I was going to find myself transported there the instant I dropped off to sleep.

But my sleep turned out to be blissfully undisturbed, and it didn't take long to shrug off the feeling of impending doom the drawing had left me with. I didn't find Sophie in my bathroom again, though a couple of nights later I came home late to find her slowly drifting up the stairs towards my front door. I gently turned her around and guided her back to bed.

She didn't seem to be aware of these nocturnal excursions, and I decided not to mention them when, a couple of evenings later, I contrived to string along with her to a trendy new cafe-bar called Prague. The others were there already, knocking back different flavoured vodkas as though prohibition was coming into force at midnight. Isabella, who had just returned from one of her trips abroad, was doling out duty free cigarettes. Grenville, Toby and a pink-eyed friend of theirs called Phineas were arguing about how much a reasonable man might be expected to pay for a one-night-stand with various film actresses and TV celebrities. Eavesdropping on this conversation was like observing the mating habits of a particularly repellent form of wildlife, but when the novelty wore off I turned to the girls, who were talking about their eating disorders. To be specific, they were talking about losing weight, though the only one of us with any excess in the flesh department was me. The others were as skinny as sliced prosciutto.

I wasn't going to be outdone by these stories of bingeing and purging and starving and ridiculous diets consisting of nothing but lettuce leaves and vitamin pills.

'I ate seven doughnuts last week,' I said. 'One after the other. It was exactly like bulimia, only without the throwing up.'

There was a long pause which stretched way beyond the merely pregnant. They regarded me with expressionless eyes. Then everyone started talking again, all at once.

'Don't let those bitches get you down,' said Carolyn, leaning towards me a little unsteadily. 'They're all neurotic as hell about their weight.'