A little rain was falling now, too; a drop landed squarely on the screen, distorting the green and grey boxes of text. She shivered. It wasn’t winter any more, but March in London didn’t exactly seem to be spring, either. Steffi swallowed hard a couple of times. I could do with a drink, she thought. A drink would be nice.

As she rounded the corner onto their street, the noise of the main road fell away as quickly as ever, and so did the big-city feeling. It would have been hard to guess now that it was a Friday night, or that they were so near a major transport hub. Some windows offered glimpses of warmth: a dinner party that had extended its run past midnight, a couple in front of a late movie. Steffi told herself that if James had done anything, there would be some activity, some visual sign of it. Police would already be here. Concerned neighbours would be hammering on the door, like they did on Netflix. But no, not necessarily. He’d sent the text under an hour ago. She could easily be the first actual witness.

She wet her lips with her tongue, went down the four stone steps, took a breath and put the key in the lock.

The place was as neat as ever, James’s hat and coat hanging where they always were, next to the denim jacket that she’d decided was too much like old-school Madonna, and which she hadn’t bothered to pick up from the floor because she was worried about being late for work. That was a good sign; it must be. You didn’t worry about tidying the hall the same day you went and did yourself in. But the odd calm of his message came into her head again. I know what I’m doing.

‘James?’ she called. ‘James? Hello?’

She was almost sure from the dead way her words landed that nobody was here. It didn’t diminish her sense, though, that she was in a TV show, one where a minor-key soundtrack was building subtly under her footsteps. She never liked coming back alone, really, not since the burglary at her old place in Clapham. One of the girls at La Chimère had been assaulted on her own doorstep the other week, violent crime was up in London; although not normally a jumpy person, Steffi had bought a ‘panic alarm’ and a small knife online in the past month. Knowing that James was almost always in – that he was almost certain to be in his room when she got back from work – had always been a little bonus about living here, although this was the first time she’d ever consciously had that thought.