She watched him lope up the stairs, his long skinny legs taking them two at a time, then she stepped outside and closed the front door behind her.

Despite the building being split into nine flats, Aaron was still the only other resident she had spoken to. She could only assume that everyone else either kept themselves to themselves or went out to work, probably long gone by the time she surfaced each day, and not back until after she’d settled herself back in for the evening. Perhaps it would be different at the weekend.

She spent a pleasant Friday morning wandering around the Science Museum, particularly enjoying the photography exhibits. She tried to imagine how hard her job would be if she had to lug those huge old-fashioned cameras around the countryside now, fiddling about with boxes and curtains and plates, or putting reels of film into the camera and taking them out again in the dark, mixing up chemicals and waiting for hours before she got to see the results of her labours. She had loved developing her own photos when, as a kid, she’d first started experimenting and learning, and the little shed in Gran and Granddad’s cottage garden had provided the perfect darkroom in which to do it – so much more fun than taking the film to be developed at the chemists’ – but she rarely used it nowadays. The arrival of digital photography and all the amazing software that enabled her to crop and filter and enhance her pictures had changed things beyond all recognition, even in the few years since she had first shown a flair for her craft.

The Natural History Museum was just around the corner so, after a sandwich and an ice-cream eaten out on the grass, she went inside and lost herself in the magical world of stuffed animals and dinosaur bones and the internal workings of the human body for a few hours, before buying herself a souvenir wooden pen, and a silly T-Rex T-shirt she had picked up on an impulse and would probably only ever wear to sleep in, and heading back towards the tube.

Cooking for one was never a particularly appealing prospect so she stopped at the takeaway place along the road from the flat and treated herself to a kebab and a can of Diet Coke, hurrying back before the food had a chance to go cold.

Much as she had wanted some time alone, it occurred to her as she munched her way through the greasy slices of lamb and mound of shredded lettuce that she was starting to feel a bit lonely. If not for Aaron and a few random strangers she’d spoken to briefly when she was being served in various shops, she really hadn’t had any kind of interaction with anyone since she’d left Norfolk and the thought of going out at night in the city by herself was still too scary to contemplate.

She picked up her phone and switched it on. It still had a couple of bars of power before she needed to recharge it. She had told herself she would only use it at bedtimes, and even then only for emergencies and to check for important messages, but now she’d eaten and, with nothing to do but read or watch TV before going to sleep, she could do with hearing a friendly voice. Before she could change her mind, she ran through her most recent contacts and pressed Sian’s number.