At the top, I bent forward with smoker’s lungs and guilty heart, before gathering myself to follow the trail of parquet floor. Stopping once to glance over the handrail. Checking for witnesses. That there was no one hanging around the flat opposite. Until nauseating vertigo forced me to step away.

I was outside your flat.

The polished brass ‘4’ stared at me. Familiar, encouraging. And I did it. I slid in the second key. It opened oh so easily and I pushed into the darkness.

The door slammed behind me. Announcing my presence throughout the building and plunging me into black.

There was no reason for me to know where the light switch was. You’d always led me in. Led me astray.

I stroked the wall with the flat of my hand until flick. The addition of light enabled me to breathe once more.

The silence was unsettling. The sheer strangeness of being there. I half expected you to be sitting in the lounge with a glass of wine. You’d call out my name any minute. Tell me to listen to our song. But of course you didn’t. Because you weren’t there. It was just me. Alone. In your flat.

As I followed the path of the hallway, your scent intensified. The aroma of shampoo and body wash filled the air. Spiced and warm. I inhaled deeply to take you in.

I don’t want you to think I didn’t know it was wrong. I did. But my desires outweighed that. I told myself I was doing no harm. And I wasn’t really. It was a building. Bricks and mortar. Things. That’s what I was violating. Whereas you had violated me.

Switching on the lounge light revealed nothing spectacular at first glance, other than an open CD case on the floor and the ‘S’ cup on the new coffee table. Angular metal and glass. Highlighting how I didn’t even make it into the lounge the previous time.

I surveyed the room like a detective at a crime scene. Not touching, contaminating. On closer inspection, the cup was half filled with tea; the CD, Tom Waits, Closing Time. An album that makes you think of people, regrets.

The TV remote lay on the sofa. I stared at it, memorizing its exact position. When satisfied, I picked it up and turned it on, activating the booming commentary of a football match. I was pleased it wasn’t porn.

I turned it off again to reinstate the silence. Then with utmost precision replaced the remote on the exact same spot. Except, it wasn’t as easy as I’d anticipated, so I made a mental note to take pictures in the future, like the continuity person on a film set.