As uneasy cohabitants, they staked out separate domains. Koji slept in the TV room, which had the kotatsu for keeping warm. He claimed the room by hanging his shirt and trousers from a hook. June remained in the second bedroom. The larger bedroom, her grandmother’s, they left conspicuously empty. For some reason he stopped calling her by her name and resorted to ‘you’, and she returned the compliment by not calling him anything. Actually, she didn’t know what she was meant to call him. What were you supposed to call such a strange and ancient person?

By day, she went out in the cold looking for work. She tried Mister Donut and the shops around the station. She tried the antiques store. The dealer was polite, a fastidious-looking man in middle age. He regarded her as he might an artefact on offer, one which was (sadly, regrettably) unsuitable for sale. The exhilaration of her escape was starting to wear off. What if she couldn’t find a job? She had nothing to fall back on, no one to advise her what to do. She had wanted her independence. Now here it is, she thought grimly.

Two days later, growing desperate, she decided to call Chiharu. She had little expectation, feeling sure the waitress had just been polite, but as it turned out, she’d heard of something. She couldn’t talk for long – she was at the university, she said, about to go into a lecture – but she took down June’s address and said she would drop by soon.

June hung up the payphone at the station and returned to the house feeling lighter, although she told herself not to get her hopes up too much.

During the evenings that first week, June heard the old man eating in his room. He appeared to subsist on adzuki-meshi, rice boiled with red beans. It was cheap, she supposed. And easy to chew. He liked to eat sitting under the kotatsu and cackle at the television. One night it was Law and Order, dubbed in Japanese, the next it was The Stinger, a reality program in which women conspired to test the fidelity of their boyfriends by setting up elaborate sting operations. Koji loved this show and kept up a running commentary, trying to warn the hapless men. ‘Look out! Don’t fall for it, idiot!’