I turn two keys in two different deadlocks, then step inside. The flat always smells slightly of damp, because it actually is damp. I wash my hands in the kitchen sink, then head for the rickety shelf unit I managed to squeeze into the tiny bathroom. I choose a washcloth from the pile of rainbow-bright towels that lives on it, then I return to the robin. Tenderly, I crouch down and wrap him in soft cotton.

As I stand, something catches my eye in the place where the robin was lying. It is a square of silky grey cloth stamped with a repeat pattern of small stethoscopes, and identical to the one Zac favoured when he needed to clean his glasses. The colour blends with the grey paving stone step, so I didn’t notice it at first. It is Zac’s calling card, and I am not sure if it is this recognition or the sound of a car screeching its brakes on the street above that makes my heart give a painful squeeze. It gives a second squeeze at the recollection that Zac once heard Peggy call me her little robin, because of my red hair. Eliza said he was flying to Edinburgh this afternoon, so he could easily have done this before he left, while I was at work. Later tonight, I will stick the cloth in a ziplock bag for Maxine. Right now, I must look after the poor robin.

There is a way out of the flat at the rear, too, through a door in the sitting room that doubles as my bedroom. I deactivate my wedge-shaped under-door alarm, then walk into the scrubby garden that only I can access. Unlike the other basement flats in this street, where each garden stretches far back and spans the width of the house, mine is the size of a double bed. Years before I moved in, the next-door house managed to increase their own garden by buying most of this one.

But the garden is fine for my needs. It is easy to climb into next door’s, then vault their fence into the alley that runs behind the houses. Late at night, several times, I have practised doing exactly this. Right now, though, all I want is the neglected patch of grass. In the last of the day’s light, I pick up the rusting trowel that the previous occupants left behind, then kneel on the wet ground to dig. By the time I have finished covering the poor creature with earth, my knees and shins are soaked, and my hair and face are dripping with rain.