After I lay down in bed at night, in that fractional moment between wide-awake and the onset of sleep, that’s where I saw her.

Her features were clear and, from the very first time, familiar, as if they belonged to the face of my own sister. I didn’t recognise her, and I still don’t know her now, although I’ve seen that face almost every night for over six months. She isn’t a friend, current or long-lost, or a colleague; and, I’m pretty sure she’s not from the internet or the TV.

I thought about whether she was simply an amalgamation of random features plucked from the multitude of faces I see every day; just a construct. That, if you took the button nose of the Romanian girl who made my coffee down by the river, and added the mouth of that woman who bit her lip as she read on the tube, and then cobbled them together with the slightly pointed ears and tiny lobes of that girl wearing sneaker-shaped earrings at that club (or was it that gig?), you’d end up with her face. I can’t accept that. She’s not a facsimile. She’s real. And for so long she wanted to tell me something.

When it all started, I confided in my boyfriend.

‘You saw what?’ he said.

‘A girl’s face, just as I closed my eyes. She looked right at me.’

‘You were obviously asleep; dreaming or something.’

‘I wasn’t dreaming and I don’t really know about the “or something”.’

I see red when he doesn’t believe me.

‘How can you know you weren’t dreaming?’

‘Because it has happened more than once. Actually, it has happened almost every night for two weeks now.’

‘Recurring dream. Definitely. Had tonnes of them when I was a kid. Listen to this one: there was this monster, your stereotypical alien, right, green, weird frond-like hands, bulbous eyes on stalks, used to live in the back garden of the girl who lived across the street. In my dream, now listen to this, it is fucked up, I had to visit the garden every night, once my family and neighbours were asleep, and tickle him, tickle his feet, or else he’d eat me, and everyone else. I can still hear his dirty chuckle. It was so weird. I had that dream for months. Fucked up, right?’

I stared at him, blankly, and took a slow breath before responding.

‘That is weird. You should speak to someone about that. But you’re not listening to me. I’ve had my share of recurring dreams and crazy nightmares. I remember an outstretched palm hovering millimetres above a hypodermic needle, set against a neon pink sunset, no movement, downwards or otherwise, just the threat of it. Had that one for weeks, but I’ve never had a fear of needles: what’s that about? I am not talking about the shit our subconscious spits out, Mike. When you were a kid you knew that your pervert monster was just a dream, even if you believed that monsters might exist, before later even ruling that out. That’s the difference: I know I’m not dreaming when I see her; I know she exists.’

It was his turn to stare back at me.

‘So, what, this girl is, like, hovering over your bed at night, fluttering her lashes, nightgown quivering in the breeze?’

‘Hardly,’ I said, starting to lose my patience, ‘you know what, it doesn’t matter. Forget I said anything.’

After the first few weeks, I moved from having a vague impression of her face to seeing the whole and then noticing its subtler details. For a start, her eyes were violet. Now, I’d never seen a girl with eyes like that before, outside of a club: I started to doubt even my own sanity. But they were there the next night, still unmistakeably purple, and scrutinizing me from below raised, slender brows. Her hair was dark, brown or black, I could never tell for sure.

Once it was clear that she wasn’t going anywhere, I asked what she wanted and why she had chosen me. When I say “asked”, I mean I posited the questions in my head each time she appeared with a vague hope that she’d be able to read my thoughts. She too tried to reach me, her eyes blazing with the effort and frustration of wordless communication. Her mouth was always shut, voice and words trapped within. Eventually, I decided that something or someone was preventing her from speaking out and my imagination crawled over every disturbing scenario, picturing dank basements and serial killer captors: I couldn’t stop thinking about what she might be going through.

As the months passed, so the desperation behind her eyes increased, but lying in the comfort of my bed I was helpless in the face of her struggle. I wanted to see her, to offer any support I could, even though the nightly encounters started to take their toll. And then, about a month ago, where there had been once been fight and anger, I saw resignation in her eyes.

It broke my heart.

She hasn’t appeared for over two weeks. Darkness, each night. She’s never stayed away this long before. I don’t know what to think or even what to feel. Perhaps she’s simply moved on, abandoning me in the hope of reaching someone else. I want that to be true, but I can’t shake that worst-case-scenario feeling.

How do you grieve for someone you’ve never spoken to, whose name you don’t even know? I can’t rationalise the loss, but I still feel it. I’ve left her down. I should have done more to help, but what could I have done?

Last night, as I closed my eyes in readiness for sleep, a new face appeared, where once there was only her.