I arrived early in the morning, around eight. I’d planned it very carefully, as you can imagine. I wore gray sweatpants and a baseball cap, and with me I had a bucket and a mop. The bucket was filled to the brim with various cleaning products. My face was scrubbed clean and not made-up and my hair was tied into a severe ponytail that emerged from the back of the baseball hat. I felt confident that if I bumped into a neighbor, they would just assume I was there to clean one of the apartments in the building.

I prayed you hadn’t changed the locks after the incident with the bag, but the key slipped easily into the lock and I entered the communal hallway, which was much fancier than my building’s, with soaring ceilings and ornate, freshly painted stucco. I didn’t know which floor you lived on, so I crept upstairs and checked the doorbells until I found the one that read ‘E & K Moss’ on the second floor. I pressed it briefly, just to be totally sure that I wouldn’t get a nasty surprise, such as a houseguest or an angry dog, when I unlocked the door. The apartment emanated the silence of a large, abandoned space. I slipped a key into the lock, and when it didn’t work, another. This one unlocked the door with a smooth click.

I stepped inside, and couldn’t help but take a sharp, stunned breath. Your home is exquisite, Kristina. The kind of home one would expect to see in interiors magazines, not a single detail left to chance. Your expensive handbags hung proudly from a series of hooks along the wall – Gucci, Givenchy, Hermès, Louis Vuitton – and it occurred to me then that you clearly have much more money than I’d thought, that you live inside an impenetrable bubble of serious wealth. I suppose I’d thought we were on the same level in that respect – I make a very good living, and I too, own a nice apartment in a snazzy part of town. But this – this was a different level. A huge gold mirror hung above an antique table on top of which stood an incredibly beautiful porcelain vase filled with peonies. I stepped closer to it, but felt afraid to meet my own gaze in the mirror – I think I irrationally craved that the person looking back at me would be you, and didn’t want the disappointment of my own reflection.