I follow the route of a familiar day-time walk, a muddy, flint-studded path that leads away from the house into a wood. I follow it through the well thinned hazels and out onto the edge of the farmland beyond. I am alone. Arriving at the fringes of more established woodland, thick with young saplings between vast, smooth-trucked beeches, the path takes me along a rough strip of grass between the wood and a large, L-shaped field. In the distance there is an orphanage where, on daytime walks, I sometimes hear children laughing and playing together. In the dream there is only silence. Where the path turns a corner towards the lane I pass an old wooden shed, that is gradually falling back into nettles and briars. When I reach the point where the path crosses a narrow back road, I  am suddenly confronted by a vast black wolf, standing at least as tall as myself. It always appears as if out of the air, materializing at the edge of the shadows just where the road runs in under overhanging trees. I know instantly that my only hope is to lie down on the road with my eyes closed, hold my breath, keep absolutely still. I must play dead, as I have done hundreds of times before. On each occasion I wait to see what will happen next. Usually, after what seems like an eternity, as the wolf sniffs around me, I wake in absolute terror just as it starts to eat me alive.

Memory