I shrugged. I wasn't desperate enough for human interaction to indulge in conversation through a closed wooden door. The wood would become bored of being the middle man in such a dialogue (potentially involving another sort of log...) and Barry would, no doubt, be embarrassed to be discussing the prospect of rain when he was making his own. I turned and looked around the landing.

It was large. A great rectangle of black diamonds on a red background led from the doorway to the bedroom I'd been in, past the bathroom and over the top of the stairs. Three other doors, closed, invited scrutiny by curious investigators - or bemused memory-losers who wondered if their mind might possibly be hiding within those rooms.

I looked at the carpet again. Black diamonds on red. Why not red on black? Would I have been more optimistic if I'd chosen the latter rather than the former? If Freud had been interviewing me for his late night radio show, would he have believed my glass was half full if I'd preferred crimson on night instead of shadows on blood? Would he have insisted my mother didn't fill my glass enough during my childhood and this had led to my memories taking flight? They'd run away to find someone who's glass runneth over and left my own mental passages barren, dusty and coated with the crust of emptiness.

I changed my mind. It was red on black. I may as well be upbeat about something.

I assumed the three doors were bedrooms. From my view through the window, I'd seen the neighbouring houses were quite large, detached from each other like the segments of a centipede which had been marching up the street until Jack's giant came along and chopped it up, Gordon Ramsay style, for a stir fry or casserole.

Would a centipede suit one more than the other? Was it like carrots and cauliflower or peppers and onion? Was there a difference between diced centi- or millipede? Would more legs make you feel you were flossing as you ate?

In a house the size of these, four bedrooms would be the norm. Perhaps there'd be a 'box room', the sort I lived in when I was very young, but the others would be big enough to at least put a bed, wardrobes and the rest of standard bedroom paraphernalia. If the builders had been generous in their construction, there might have been space for a treadmill or gaming chair or a large rug in front of an open fire for night-time treats.

My hand hovered over the handle of the nearest door when I realised something.

I lived in a box room when I was young. The wallpaper was a strange sort of blue, which you'd never see in the sky or the sea. Beneath the wallpaper was polystyrene. I remembered the rolls of the stuff, put up beneath the wallpaper to insulate and prevent me seeing my breath. My breath was still there afterwards, but the polystyrene wall coverings had magically turned it invisible, so it was no longer the ghost like ectoplasm escaping my mouth. My bed was against one wall and there was a ledge, produced from the headspace on the stairs below, where I had all my folded clothes. Apart from a bookcase, there was no room for any other furniture, so the ledge was my wardrobe, desk and bedside table (even though it was at the foot of the bed, not beside it).

I could see it clearly. I could remember the time I was in bed and the wall shook, from the outer wall which housed the window, all the way along to the door, which then joined in the shaking. Then it stopped, fading away like the rumble of a truck vanishing into the distance. Except there were no trucks. We lived on a quiet street and, at that time, everyone was in bed or watching TV.

I remembered the time I'd not long started to sleep without pyjamas. I'd wear them to bed, embarrassed to admit I might be growing up and want to be an adult a few years before my time. I remembered my mother coming in, in the morning, and standing there asking me if I was getting up while I tried my best to get my pyjamas back on under the covers before she noticed.

I remembered.

And there, on the very tip of my tongue, precariously balanced, ready to fall off to the black abyss of forgetfulness, was my name.

I gasped as I reached out for it. I held my breath as I almost touched it. Then I sighed as my movement shifted its weight and it toppled over.

For a few seconds, I'd felt as if I were walking through a dark tunnel, one with tracks running along the centre. As I stepped from sleeper to sleeper, I could feel a presence in the darkness - myself. My arms were outstretched, feeling the air for my past. I could almost hear the train, containing me in its carriages, rumbling through the tunnel towards me, then I was out the other side, back in the light with the train derailing somewhere behind me. My memories were scattered and smashed and broken.

If I'd still been in the tunnel to board the train and receive them, I could well have been killed as it left the rails.

Anywho-be-do. Deeper into the lion's den I venture. I turned the handle. The door was locked. Well, that was anticlimactic. I wanted there to be someone in there more... meaty than Barry. Someone who could take me by the hand and fly across the rooftops to Neverland where I could reacquaint myself with my younger version. Someone who could shout at me to get out and slam the door in my face. Someone to gasp and faint at the sight of someone they knew but had thought lost or dead or... something.

A locked door meant, even if any of those things hid in the room beyond, they remained out of my reach.

The second door was locked too. Even better. I imagined cabinets, chests of drawers and cardboard boxes overflowing with photos, certificates and school reports stating how I was a pleasant pupil but needed to stop talking and focus on the task at hand. My life was within these walls, or else why had I been brought here? Who was this Jasmine and why had she saved me from being arrested? Who was Barry and why was he not even surprised that I was even here?

I moved to the third room and turned the handle, expecting it to be locked too. It wasn't.

I stepped inside and hadn't even had enough time to focus on what might be inside before there was a female scream and a hand slapped across my face. I was pushed out, briefly noticing a flash of too much flesh before the door actually was slammed in my face.

I stood there, panting, having left my breath on the other side of the door. After a few moments, it seemed to have seeped back into my lungs, tasting a little woody, perhaps from having to squeeze through the panels to get back to me. I blinked and shook my head.

OK, that was a success. A bare bedroom, a bathroom, two locked doors and this. Perhaps I should see how many face slaps I could get downstairs. If I managed a hat trick, maybe I'd get a prize.

"You ok?"

I turned, sharply. I didn't know anyone was behind me. It was Barry. He'd clearly finished in the bathroom and was wiping his hands on his not-quite-clean-but-not-actually-dirty jeans.

"Erm..." No, I thought. "Yes," I said. "I just had a shock."

"Doesn't look like you were the only one," he said laughing and nodding towards the room I'd just been ejected from. "Don't worry, she's always like that. See anything good?"

He winked and I shuddered inwardly. I'd only just met this man and he was being crude. I felt sure I could share a dirty joke with the best, but it would take at least a few days to be comfortable with someone enough to attempt suggestive comments.

"No," I said. "It was too quick."

"Shame," he sighed. He walked to the top step of the stairwell. "Fancy a cuppa?"

"Sure," I answered, following.

I assumed, if I was sitting with a cup in my hand, I'd be less likely to offend someone or be hit. Also, some form of socialising might spark a light in the darkness of my mind. I followed him downstairs, staring at the back of his head.

"You've got blood in your hair - or paint or something."

He reached back and touched his hair, then looked at his hand. We were at the foot of the stairs by this point, standing in a cavernous entranceway with parquet flooring and exits off in every direction.

"Oh, I thought that had washed out. Been painting." He entered the open doorway to his left and, again, I followed.

It didn't look like paint to me. It looked like blood. I recently been far more intimate with the crimson tide than I'd prefer, and the dark red spots in his hair looked nothing like paint. Besides, why would it be on the back of his head? Surely it would be on his face or down his front?

"Tea or coffee?" he asked, indicating a large, stocky table which looked as if it had been air lifted in from a farmer's kitchen. It was aged and scarred, with darker patches puddling across the surface. Thick, chunky legs held what must have been the mighty weight of the even thicker and chunkier top. I pulled out a matching chair, which scraped across the tiled floor like fingers down a chalkboard.

"Sorry," I apologised.

"No worries. I do it all the time. The chairs are too heavy to easily lift and pull out. I don't know why she doesn't get something lighter."

"She?" Was this Jasmine? Was it her house?

"Yes," he said, vaguely. "Anyway, tea or coffee?"

What did I drink? Did I even like caffeinated beverages, or did I favour the flavour of things like Coke or orange Tango? And did I take sugar or was I sweet enough? I doubted that - me sweetness, not whether I took sugar in my drink. Something told me I could be definitely sour if I needed to be.

"Whatever you're having," I answered. "I'm easy."

"Easy? You're far from bloody easy!"

Pardon? How would he know?

"Pardon? What do you mean? Do you know me?"

Barry coughed, an obvious attempt to clear his throat of the dregs of something he, perhaps, shouldn't have said.

"Eh? Of course I do. You're John. We met on the landing."

"So, you don't know me?"

"Don't you know who you are, or something? Don't you know if I know you?"

"No," I shook my head, staring down and the fine cracks which made up the grain of the wood. They seemed to be racing to the far edge, criss-crossing in vain attempts to run each other off the wooden road. My eyes followed them, speeding up as they neared the finish line. My gaze continued past the end of the table.

A pair of just-this-side-of-scruffy jeans wrapped themselves around a pair of legs. I looked up.

"Here," Barry said. "I made you coffee. One sugar, strong and black, like my men."

He chuckled to himself. I guessed it was joke he'd used many times before, so much so, it was now only funny to him - if, indeed, anyone else had ever seen any humour in it.

"Thanks," I said, faking a smile.

He raised an eyebrow, reminding me of a homeless Spock, but without the ears or the intellect. I had no idea whether Barry was clever or a molehill short of a mountain, and I admonished myself for making snap judgements, but he didn't come across as someone who had continued past school to further education. He seemed to be someone who had left school with the intention of getting a job but the ability to claim benefits.

When did I become such a snob? Was I always this way? Did I always look down on people because they weren't as clean or as eloquent as I was? I didn't even know myself! Who was to say I wasn't the sort of person whom Barry would look down upon? Mentally, I repeated the slap I'd received upstairs. Give the man a chance. He was being personable. He was being friendly to a complete stranger. He made a crap joke but, after a couple of sips, a decent cup of coffee.

I smiled again, more sincerely this time. Barry could easily have been a serial killer for all I knew, but he wasn't licking his lips and eyeing up my jugular so I would give him the benefit of the doubt.

"I appreciate it," I said. And I did.

Barry and I looked at each other for a moment, with neither of us saying anything. I took a deep breath and moved my gaze to my coffee. A staring competition in silence made my bizarre circumstances feel awkward, and the drink wasn't trying to make me blink first. He was just watching me and I felt like a museum exhibition where, for a fiver during the week but free every other Sunday, you could idly wander the halls, reading and prodding and thinking how grateful you were you didn't live a hundred years ago. No wifi, for a start. Or custard creams.

What would the card next to me say? Male. Five feet (I glanced at my body) nine inches, or so. Would that be it? I didn't know if I was a butcher, a baker or a memory faker. My card would be as vague as my identity and as blank as my stare.

"Yes, Barry. That's fine, Barry. Thanks a bloody million, Barry."

I let my gaze meet with Barry's once more and, while they reminisced over the last time they'd been together, I frowned.

"Sorry?"

"I was just talking to you and you completely ignored me. After I'd made you that cuppa too. I don't do that for just anyone. Thought you might need one. Gratitude or what?"

He slammed his cup down on the table, causing the liquid to splash up over the sides and across his fingers.

"Ow! Now look what you've done!"

Barry flicked his hand at me, spraying me with the overspill. He wiped it on his jeans.

"Hey!" I said sharply. "I didn't hear you! My mind wandered. I zoned out!"

"Didn't think you had a mind to wander," he spat. "Forget it!"

He turned and stormed out of the kitchen, leaving me stunned. What had just happened? I didn't hear him. Sure, whatever he was saying probably was more important than how well I'd be described by the staff at a museum, but my missing it certainly didn't warrant him losing his temper.