Come to think of it, the falling man hadn’t keyed in as far as she could remember. On the replay, he had swept inside, away from her, without a pause. She pushed at the door – and it swung open.

The hallway was longer than she’d imagined from the outside; it was more of corridor, the only light spilling from a bright doorway down the end, illuminating the dusty bootprints on the sealed-wood floor. Picture frames leaning against the skirting and a paint-flecked dropcloth draped over the open door of a closet, which had disgorged an assortment of weathered cardboard boxes brimming with files and papers and knots of what looked like electrical flex. The banging, then a heavy grate of shifting furniture, was coming from upstairs, accompanied by a loud, echoing phrase and a brief, barked laugh of men at work. Petra glanced behind her at the door, which had swung shut behind her. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. But her feet carried her onward, inward. She’d go as far as the lit room at the end of the corridor, and if she hadn’t found the stairs or any hint of the falling man, she’d turn back.

As she advanced, the creak of the floorboards mercifully swallowed up by the heavy noises from upstairs, Petra noticed that the frames leant against the skirting held album covers and photographs of musicians. ‘Two-Tone Zone’, a Madness-like group of zoot-suited jazzmen posing against a chequerboard backdrop; ‘The Sign of Six’, a collection of Rastas seated around an oil-drum fire under a graffitied urban bridge; some more modern-looking pop stars, with full-on glamour shots; and a long-haired, be-jeaned rock-folk guy she half recognised. Finally, a couple of framed golden records shyly facing the wall.

A recording studio, lined up here alongside the tidy homes? It shouldn’t surprise her, a lot of creative stuff happened in Leamington – games companies mostly, but also design and art and advertising and future tech, even some artists and novelists lurking. The hard part was knowing where to look. Since she’d come to England, she’d enjoyed imagining all the endeavour behind the narrow housefronts, all the private lives and public functions that happened behind those doors and those slender, serried windows. There was teeming variation behind those doors, and it was rare to get a look inside: a dentist’s appointment, that time she went with Helena to the solicitor’s office to witness her will, and the visits to those friends who’d invited her over. A small plaque, perhaps, a discreet name tag, would indicate a multi-million-pound enterprise rather than the brash steel, Perspex and neon signstacks you’d get in Joburg office parks. So, yeah, why not a recording studio too?

Petra had just squatted down to read the label on one of the gold records – The Specials – but she didn’t have time to take in anything else before the air reverberated like the building was imploding and a man careered around a corner she hadn’t even known was there.