Cilla didn’t flush right away. In fact, her face went pale and waxy and she got this faraway look. I’d seen it when she was in my class – waiting to be picked for a team, trudging up to the softball plate. It was the look of someone still blankly waiting for a bus long after everyone else has realised it isn’t coming.

The man kept patting the air in front of him. Finally, struggling, his voice breaking, he said, ‘This house is not for sale. Okay? There’s been a mistake. This is our house. Our house.’

Cilla remained rooted to the spot. Two paces away, so did I. It was Pete who walked up to the bed. He yanked the duvet off and threw it so far into the air it spun like flung dough. He ripped the sheet back, revealing the soft, hairy, warm bodies of the intruders.

The woman shrieked and went to cover herself, but Pete wasn’t deterred.

‘Get out,’ he said. He clapped his hands, and I half expected the light to switch off.

When they didn’t move, he clapped again and started shouting. ‘Now! Out!’

The man, cowed, naked, said nothing more. Soon the couple were feeling about on the ground for their clothes, forgoing underwear in their haste to be covered. The woman, on her hands and knees, looked at me for a moment and then looked away. I saw her hand hover over a used condom, but she decided to leave it where it was.

Once they were dressed, Pete drove them out of the room as if they were sheep. Watching him use his height, his bulk, hearing the disgust in his voice, I felt that familiar mixture of attraction and distaste; distaste at his unkindness, but an undeniable attraction to the authority with which he evicted the couple from their property.

After they had left I slid the bedside drawer open, saw a hairbrush filled with the woman’s hair, some pearl earrings which might have been real or might have been a good fake. I wasn’t going to rub them against my teeth to check. I closed the drawer without disturbing anything.

Once the previous owners were outside, Pete stomped back up the stairs and into the master bedroom. He flung the window open. He went around the room gathering up the things they had touched – including the sheet, including the condom. For a terrible moment I was worried he would fling everything out onto the freshly trimmed front lawn, but he just stood there clutching it, furious.

Cilla swallowed. ‘Thank you,’ she said, gazing at Pete with a glassiness in her eyes. Her face was red now, a bright, flammable red. She was so grateful I could barely look. I thought she was going to cry.