Sipping her coffee, which had already gone cold, Prue was so lost in thought that, at first, she didn’t hear her name being called.

‘Hey, Prue! You going deaf, or just ignoring me?’

She looked up to see Aaron hanging out of the window of the flat below her own and laughing at her.

‘Sorry. In a world of my own.’

‘Mind if I come down and join you?’

‘Course not. It’s your garden, not mine.’

The window banged shut and he disappeared from view, bounding out through the garden door a few moments later.

‘It’s ages since I’ve been out here,’ he said, plonking himself down on the bench beside her.

‘Careful. I haven’t wiped that bit.’

He lifted his bottom, inspected the seat of his jeans and sat down again. ‘Too late to worry now,’ he said. ‘They’re due for a wash anyway! So, you’ve found our own little Kew Gardens then?’

‘Hardly.’

‘It is a bit rundown, I suppose.’ He looked around it as if he hadn’t really noticed before.

‘Does nobody ever do anything with it?’

‘With it?’

‘You know, maintain it, look after it, plant anything …?’

‘Not so you’d notice. All too busy, I guess. Or all waiting for someone else to do it. That’s the problem with shared space, isn’t it? Like if one of the lightbulbs goes on the landing, or the hall doormat needs a shake. Everyone waits and hopes someone else will take care of it, or that if they leave it long enough it’ll somehow happen by magic.’

‘And it never does?’

‘Oh, there is a sort of part-time caretaker. He’s a cousin, I think, or maybe it’s a nephew, of the landlord. Comes in a van from time to time and hoovers the stairs, washes the front step, runs a cloth over the banisters, that sort of thing, and the grass gets cut maybe three or four times a year if he remembers to bring the mower and it’s not actually raining on the day he comes … but day to day we’re pretty much left to our own devices. A bit different from your place, I presume?’

‘The village, you mean? Well, yes, it’s all cottages and houses, no flats, and most people make sure their gardens look neat and their nets are washed, if you know what I mean. There is a certain pride in keeping everything nice.’

‘Sounds idyllic. Like something off the lid of an old chocolate box, like the one my mum keeps her buttons in.’

‘Does she? My gran used to do that too, but hers were in a biscuit tin. In fact, I’ve still got it, not that I ever do enough sewing to need buttons, but I can’t throw them away.’

‘Funny, isn’t it? How people can come from totally different backgrounds, but there’s always something exactly the same?’

‘We’re all the same under the skin, I suppose.’ Prue finished her coffee and put her mug down. ‘So, not working tonight?’