Again he tried to put his uneasiness down to paranoia, reasoning that he’d probably been working too hard and spending too much time alone. But once in a while he would check the rooms, the cupboards, the closets. Though he never found anything, that nagging sense of doubt continued to visit him at night. During the weekends, at certain times of the day, he would get the feeling that he was not alone. The surveillance system had been expensive, but it gave him some peace of mind. He said he only wished he’d thought of it sooner.

By the time the officers had finished their interrogation, the young man had learned some more details about the old woman: that she was homeless and had broken into his home the previous winter, set up a sleeping space for herself in the spare closet, and managed to live there undetected for a year. He found this difficult to accept, as he was sure he’d checked that closet, but then admitted that yes, perhaps in his haste he hadn’t bothered to push the hanging clothes aside to check behind the plastic storage boxes. He also learned that she’d spent her days cooking, cleaning, doing chores around the house, and getting electrical items repaired for him. His cleaner had not, as he’d believed, had a surge of conscientiousness.

After coming home from the police station, he opened up the closet and, overcoming feelings of queasiness, gathered the old woman’s things into a garbage bag. There wasn’t much there—a sleeping bag, some clothes, two empty water bottles, a thin stack of letters addressed to her son, and some drawings and Post-it notes lining the walls.

Ken Mok spent the following week in a state of indignation and embarrassment. He wanted to share the burden of his victimization with other people—his father, his co-workers, the woman who no longer wanted to speak to him—but decided against it. His father would see this incident as further proof of his son’s stupidity and incompetence. How can a person not know that a stranger is living in their house? For a year! His co-workers would no doubt see this as a ripe opportunity for ridicule. The day after the arrest, short articles had appeared in several newspapers, identifying the young man as “A 33-year old I.T. professional. The old woman was identified as Ng Shui Lin, 64 years old. The woman appeared to be of normal mental health. When police asked her why she had lived in secrecy at the man’s home for a year, she replied, ‘I had nowhere to live.’”

A few days later, a colleague emailed him an article about the incident, which someone else had sent him from a news website. The subject line read, How Dumb Is This Guy? Mr. Mok assured himself that this wasn’t directed at him personally. It would be impossible for anyone to know the true details of the incident; there must be hundreds of thirty-three-year-old I.T. professionals living in the area. He searched the story online and found that brief articles had appeared in some sixty-seven news outlets, comprised largely of websites from China. To his relief, he found that in all of these, he remained anonymous.