Professor Verbernelaan

The floors are grimy. We are expected to share two spartan toilet cubicles between seventeen bodies. We have no glasses left — too many drunken nights — and the mugs deplete faster than we can replace them. When you light the left-hand hob to cook, you have to cheat death with a lighter because the ignition switch doesn’t work. Even the bedroom doors are problematic — you have to battle with the lock before you can enter.

And even though all I can smell is a sickly-sweet aroma of weed and body odour, this ramshackle flat feels more like a home than anywhere else in the world.