‘Him,’ Jake repeats more firmly, his eyes flicking with amusement to the ceiling above them. ‘The old man upstairs. He was at the door when I came in.’

She watches him rummaging in the fridge until he finds a can of beer and snaps it open. ‘What’s he like?’

‘I only got a glimpse of him cowering there on the step. But he looked grizzled.’

‘Grizzled?’

His expression changes, his mouth downturns into a comic mask of ill-favour, hunching his shoulders forward to appear disfigured.

‘Grizzled,’ he snarls, in his mock-frightening voice.

She laughs at him. She’s seen him do this before – his Caliban, his Henry V, his Frankenstein’s monster.

She moves towards him and he drops the act, kisses her swiftly, then offers her his beer but she declines. She’s been feeling out of sorts since lunchtime.

‘Did you talk to him – introduce yourself?’ she asks.

‘I said hello but he didn’t respond. Too busy picking bits of eggshell off his house.’

‘Eggshell? What do you mean?’

‘The house. Someone’s pelted it with eggs.’

‘Who?’ she asks, a note of surprised indignation in her tone.

‘I dunno. I didn’t see them doing it. But the house is dripping in raw egg, and he’s outside on his hands and knees, cleaning it up.’

‘That’s awful. Should we offer to help him?’

‘No! Why would we?’ Jake is rummaging in his bag, and when he finds his script, he throws himself into the armchair and starts looking through it.

‘Because he’s an old man. It doesn’t seem right.’

‘He’s not that old.’

‘What age do you reckon he is?’ she asks, curious now. She hasn’t seen him yet, their landlord, although she’s heard him. The creak of floorboards, the gurgling pipes. Sometimes she thinks she catches the low melody of him singing. Or maybe it’s just the radio she’s hearing.

‘I dunno. Younger than my dad. He looked fit enough. I wouldn’t feel obligated.’

She feels the smallest rise of annoyance inside her at the way he’s loafing on the armchair with his beer and his script.

‘Well, I’ll check on him, if you won’t,’ she says.

But when she goes outside and looks up towards the front door, she finds it closed and the step empty. There are marks on the walls where the egg has started drying in the sun, and it makes her uneasy, the randomness of the act. None of the other houses seem to have been picked out for this abuse.

‘Any sign of him?’ Jake asks, when she comes back inside. She tells him no, and he remarks: ‘Scuttled back into his lair, has he?’

‘Perhaps he’s shy.’ Being shy herself, she feels a duty to defend him.