Kearney went quietly into the back room and began to empty the chest of drawers, stuffing clothes, books, packs of cards and personal items into his Marin courier bag in the dark. The room looked out onto the central well of the block. Kearney hadn’t been in there long when he began to hear voices echoing up from one of the lower floors. It sounded like a man and a woman arguing, but he couldn’t make out any words, only a feeling of loss and threat. He got up off his knees and drew the curtains. The voices seeped in anyway. When he had what he wanted, he tried to zip up the bag. The zip caught. He looked down. The bag and everything in it was covered in a thick soft even layer of dust. This image gave him such a sense of his life draining away that he was filled with terror again. Anna woke up in the other room.

“Michael?” she said. “Is that you? That’s you isn’t it?”

“Go to sleep,” Kearney advised her. “I just came for some things.”

There was a pause while she assimilated this. Then she said:

“I’ll make you a cup of tea. I was just going to make tea but I fell asleep. I was so exhausted I just fell asleep.”

“There’s no need to do that,” he said.

He heard the bed creak as she got up. She came and leaned in the doorway in her long cotton nightdress, yawning and rubbing her face. “What are you doing?” she said. She must have smelt the vomit on the front of his jacket, because she said: “Have you been ill?” She switched the light on suddenly. Kearney made a futile gesture with the bag in his hand. They stood there blinking at each other.

“You’re leaving.”

“Anna,” Kearney said, “it’s for the best.”

“How can you bloody say that!” she shouted. “How can you bloody say it’s for the best?”

Kearney began to speak, then shrugged.

“I thought you were going to stay! Yesterday you said this was good, you said it was good.”

“We were fucking, Anna. I said that was good.”

“I know. I know. It was good.”

“I said it was good fucking you, that’s all,” he said. “That was all I meant.”

She slid down in the doorway and sat with her knees drawn up.

“You let me feel as if you were going to stay.”

“You did that yourself,” Kearney tried to persuade her.

She stared up at him angrily. “You wanted it too,” she insisted. “You practically said as much to me.” She sniffed, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Oh well,” she said. “Men are always so stupid and frightened.” She shivered suddenly. “Is it cold in here? I’m awake now anyway. At least have some tea. It won’t take a minute.”