"I think the loneliness is exacerbated when your partner is sleeping next to you, because you can’t wake them, you can’t reach them, they’re not there. They’re very present, they are a lump, a rock, but they are also absent, they are not themselves." In contrast, she is too present, lying or sitting or turning awake. She is hyper vigilant of her surroundings, of her temperature, of the feeling of her skin against the bedclothes. "Rather than approaching insomnia as a lack of sleep, I think of it as a violent presence," she says. Awake at night and in the early hours of the dawn, we are on a different plane of existence from our snoring bedfellows. This is something Benjamin has, remarkably, taught herself not just to tolerate but perhaps even enjoy.