It’s summer, so the heating’s off; it can’t be the pipes or radiators clicking to life. It’s summer, so the balcony door is open, to let air into your airless flat. You’re on the third floor and the glass box of a balcony doesn’t adjoin those of the neighbours, so it’s always seemed safe enough.

Your breathing sounds noisy. Your heart too, leaping like a trapped thing in your chest.

The baby snuffles and rustles and turns onto her tummy. Was that another footstep?

You listen with your fingertips, with every hair of your head.

You locked the door last night, you’re sure of it. Or rather, didn’t fully lock it, as the Chubb lock has been sticking, but flicked the snib downwards to disable the Yale. It’s always been your husband’s task, like the bins and the recycling and the washing of pans, in the wordless division of domestic labour. But he’s away for two nights, of which this is the first – a symposium in Berlin. You don’t always bother doing the blinds, with the evenings so long. Has someone been watching? You know more than you mean to about the families opposite, the dioramas of their lives. Has someone who knows you, knows your husband, seen on his Facebook or Instagram that he’s away?

You listen, you listen. Your whole body aches with listening. 78

There was the man who came to rehang the front door, when it sagged on its hinges and kept jamming in the frame. For weeks afterwards you had missed calls from an unknown number. When you finally texted the number and said Who is this? a message flashed back instantly, An admirer, followed by a smiley face, and then a second message, Wud u like 2 go 4 a drink?

I think you’ve got the wrong number, you texted.

I dont think so (another smiley face)

I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you are.

Yes u do

You didn’t reply, and showed the texts to your husband that night. Do you want me to text, he said, and say I’m your husband or something?

Oh what, like back off, this chattel’s mine?

You both laughed, and it no longer seemed so sinister.

You were pregnant at the time, though not enough that it showed. You’d felt nauseous, blurry; the man’s arrival had jolted you from a midday nap – that first trimester tiredness that leaches from your very bones. You’d been blank at the door, almost rude, then overcompensated by faking brightness, offering tea, coffee, your stash of ginger biscuits. When he’d said, What I’d really like is a nice cold beer, you’d laughed and said, Sounds good.