For the next few days, she monitors the situation closely.

Having spent two decades observing the comings and goings on in Wyndham Park – the births and deaths, the divorces, repossessions, feuds and scandals – she sees herself as the custodian of the street’s history. Nothing escapes her attention. Sometimes she feels as if she has spent her whole life staring out of her bedroom window.

She remembers the first time she stood in this room, taking in the ancient flocked wallpaper, its ceiling crusted with spreading brown stains, and trying to envisage the two of them – her and Greg – spending their lives there, possibly with children of their own.

‘What do you think?’ Greg had asked, a breathy bewilderment still in his voice.

He could hardly believe he was in this position, she knew. Barely thirty and already married, getting his hopes up about this house. It was an executor’s sale.

‘Did he die in this room?’ she had asked, and he had laughed, then accused her of being squeamish, coming to stand behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist, his hold firm.

She had married Greg because he was solid, reliable. ‘A safe bet,’ her father had called him. But that was in the early years of her marriage, before she discovered something vital: that feeling safe can be constricting. It takes all the air out of life. She wanted excitement, a thrill. Something deeper and more profound, something that moved her.

While she waits for a sign from Anton, watching his house carefully, she thinks of all the things that have happened on this street under her surveillance. From this very window, she had borne witness to events that both shocked and moved her. Like the day the police came and took Anton away.

She remembers the morning it happened.

They came for him early, before anyone on the street was awake. Barely forty-eight hours had passed since the discovery of Charlotte’s body.