You are sucking on a milkshake. Outside the air is white hot and thick but inside the milk bar it is cool and gloomy. A couple of fans circle slowly overhead. The panelled booths and art deco mirrors hold the ghosts of countless boring afternoons, memories of pubescent flirting and special treats when the old man was in town with money to spend. Somebody makes slurping noises with their straw – deliberately or not? – and then giggles because it reminds them of something forbidden.

You feel uneasy. You are not yourself today. You miss the feel of bedclothes warmed by the presence of another body. You long to find personal belongings left behind inadvertently, or the remains of a meal from the night before, or a message propped up against the sitting room mirror, or half-drunk cups of tea on the kitchen table, small change lost behind the settee, an empty envelope used as a shopping list, a pair of shoes discarded in the hallway, damp towels and soft bars of soap, an item of clothing left draped over the back of a chair. You yearn for all this and more. You are feeling homesick.

After driving for – how long? – you eventually hit the coast. You sit on a beach and watch the moon, red like an angry sore, rise slowly above the horizon. You find a bar in which to celebrate your motoring feat but while waiting to be served, a round-faced, sad-eyed man wearing a lurid purple shirt gets up on the temporary stage and, switching on a drum machine, starts to sing the same song which you’ve been singing all the way across the desert.

In the park I saw a Daddy with a laughing little girl that he was swinging...

The man sings too fast and too high but it is the same song, your song, even if it no longer belongs to you.

Then I headed down the street and somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringing...

You spend a troubled night parked beside the ocean, listening to a raging wind hammer into the palm trees, drowning out the distant roar of the waves. When the light turns grey, you go for a hurried walk along the beach, then sweep the wind-blown debris off the car and plot the quickest route back to the place where you started. By the time the sun comes up, you are already gone.