I go with my husband to visit our new flat some ten minutes away from where we live. We still possess our ordinary large house, as it is now where we live with three of our four children though one of them, the youngest instead of being fifteen years old in the dream is still a baby on the brink of walking. The flat that we will soon occupy – only my husband and I for short spells, for the occasional weekend or at nights during the week when my husband cannot stand the pressure of life at home any longer – is in a state of incompleteness. There are boxes stacked one above the other, some opened and some minus half their contents, in almost every room. It has a living-out-of-a-suitcase feel.

That’s okay I think because we will never live here. It’s just an occasional escape from the rigours of ordinary home life. Of course we must take the baby with us. We cannot leave her at home alone, even with her older sisters. The flat has two storeys and already I worry about how she will manage the stairs.

At one stage I start to walk around the flat in the company of a friend and neighbour. I offer her the grand tour. By the time we reach the upstairs bedroom I realise how unliveable this place is. We cannot sleep here. The beds are disassembled. Even the packages of tea on the kitchen sink are still sealed in hard-to-get-at boxes.

We plan to take a bus back home but we are not sure how to get there. Then we are in the car and I urge my husband to follow the blue Ventura bus. It goes to the school, and once we arrive at the school we will recognise where we are. We follow the bus past the schoolyard, which has been cleaned up and extended over the holidays. The back of the schoolyard beyond the classroom buildings extends down some way into a gully. It slopes in stages with a couple of long cliff like drops onto flat grassy plateaux.

How can they allow children to get to such steep ridges? I wonder. This schoolyard is dangerous.

I wake up.