I can’t stop thinking about ‘Why blend in when you were born to stand out?’ It goes round and round my head like an earworm.

People want to stand out. But not too much. Or they want to stand out, but only in ways they choose. I know there’s something here. I just can’t quite get at it. I Google. I read old customer interviews from the files Alex helped me bring home. I make a mind map. After waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep, I go for a walk. Alone.

It only takes me a couple of minutes to stop feeling nervous. No one can see me and so no one can threaten me. It’s odd – my entire life I’ve just accepted that I can’t go out after a certain time, that it wouldn’t be safe for me to go out, alone, for a walk, at night. But why should that be the case? Why shouldn’t I be able to do this? Why do we just accept that half the population basically has a curfew? That if I did this usually and something happened to me, people would say it was my fault for being out on my own at night? It’s ridiculous.

I turn right onto Parkway and think about walking in the middle of the road, until I remember I’m invisible, not invincible. I keep walking, tipping my head back to look up at the dark sky, listening to the sound of traffic in the distance.

My shoulders prickle when I hear laughter and shouting and see a group of men and women coming round the corner. They’re clearly drunk. The women are hobbling on their heels, hanging off the men’s arms for support, the men are yelling to each other and one of them’s singing something that sounds like ‘Delilah’, but it’s so slurred and off-key I’m not really sure.

‘Hey! Hey, love!’ one of the men shouts and I freeze because he’s looking directly at me.

‘Hey!’ he shouts again and I turn round and see a woman walking behind me. She’s short and blonde and round and she’s wearing wedge-heeled sandals and a nervous expression, her bag clutched under her arm.

I take a step back into the doorway of the Co-op and wait to see what he’s going to do. I wish I could tell the woman that I’m here, that whatever he’s planning isn’t going to happen because I’m going to kick his arse, but I know she’d been even more scared of invisible me than she is of him.

The guy runs across the road towards us and I wonder at what point I intervene. The woman steps closer to me and I can smell her perfume, hear her breathing.

‘You dropped—’ the bloke says and he jogs a bit past us and then turns back, holding out a twenty-pound note.

‘Oh!’ the woman says. ‘Oh my god! Thank you so much.’

‘Alright, love?’ the man says. He’s got a Yorkshire accent. ‘You don’t want to lose a twenty, do you?’

The men on the other side of the road are jeering at him, the women laughing.

‘Shut the fuck up, knobheads,’ he calls back cheerfully. ‘Are you alright?’ he asks the woman. ‘Do you know where you’re going?’

‘I’m just going to get a cab on the main road,’ she says. She has an accent too, but I can’t place it.

‘Want me to walk you?’ he asks, to more jeers from his mates.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Thanks.’

He gives her a thumbs-up and jogs back across the road to cheers from the others. I walk behind the woman to the end of the road and wait until she’s in a cab, watching it drive away until I can’t see its lights any more.

I walk along Prince Albert Road, the direction her cab went, and wonder where she’d been and what she was doing out so late. I wonder what I would have done if the man had attacked her. I feel massive relief – and something close to joy – that he didn’t. That he wanted to help. That she’s going home feeling cheered by their interaction and not frightened or worse.

Hashtag not all men, as Tash would say. But enough men. That’s the problem.

I look up at the huge, cream-painted houses that line the road and wonder about the people inside. Who they are, how long they’ve lived here, what professions allow you to own such beautiful houses in such an expensive part of London. There’s a car parked outside one of them, half on the pavement, its boot wide open. I stop and look around, wondering if someone’s emptying it and will be back out in a minute, but when no one comes, I reach up and try to slam it shut, but the catch is obviously broken and it springs open again.

There’s not much in the boot – a child’s scooter, a backpack, some loose books – but I want it to still be there in the morning, so I try to close the boot again, pressing on it instead of slamming it, but it springs open again. I think about going up to the house and ringing the buzzer, but I know some people have video entry phones now and I don’t want to freak anyone out, so I carry on walking.

Will they come out in the morning and find the boot empty, their stuff stolen? Or will it all be as they left it and they’ll feel like they had a lucky escape? I think about the blonde woman again – how it could have gone either way and there was just no way of knowing. That’s the scariest thing.

I hesitate at the entrance to the canal – I can’t walk along the canal at this time of night, surely. But then I realise that of course I can. I can go anywhere I want. It’s even darker – there’s no street lighting down here – but the full moon is surprisingly bright and I turn on my phone torch, holding it close to my body. I doubt I’ll bump into anyone down here at this time, but if I do, I can stick my phone back in my pocket before they realise what it is.

I’ve probably only been walking for about five minutes when I hear a sound that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and my chest vibrate. A long, low, growl. A lion. Because somewhere in this park is the zoo. Once I realise, I can smell it: hay and manure and warm, ripe animal. It mingles with the scent of the canal, but then separates out and I can’t believe I didn’t notice it sooner.

I pass a geometric mesh aviary and hear chirping and tweeting. I look up and see a parrot hanging off the mesh. I can’t see its colours in the darkness, but I can picture its bright blue and red and yellow feathers in my mind. I hear a sound from the other side of the canal, and I can see there’s an animal enclosure there. I can’t work out what it is at first, but I stare long enough that it gradually comes into focus. It’s a giraffe and, once I see it, I can’t believe I hadn’t been able to see it sooner. It stares straight down the canal, its movements slow and languorous, long-lashed eyes blinking and enormous black tongue rolling out of its mouth to curl around a nearby branch, before scrolling back in again.

I don’t know how long I watch it for, but by the time it turns and lopes back inside, I know exactly what I’m going to do for the presentation.