Dot likes knowing that on all the floors below her, there is nothing but empty rooms. She puts the radio on. Lights a joint she left in the ashtray. Thinks of the signs of people’s lives left on other floors. Dirty marks where pictures hung on walls. Smudges of handprints. Fingerprints. Single-pane windows. So much unopened mail. Straw remnants of a spider plant. A plastic Yoda alarm clock. It goes off every morning in 1F1. Half-empty shampoo bottles. Bathtubs with tide marks. A huge parrot cage in 5F5 and seeds all over the carpet. A piano with no song left in it. Damp socks in the bottom of a chest of drawers. A small box of unused sex toys. A teddy dropped in a hallway. Fridges switched off. Airless plastic cavities breed a multiverse of bacterium. In a flat on the eighth floor, there is a neatly made bed as if the owner might return any night now to sleep here. Mould spores congregate in bathrooms. Books have nobody to tell their stories to. A radio is switched ON but its batteries are rusted. Orange-brown stains seep out. In the basement, there are used needles with traces of blood and heroin. There are roaches, condoms, burnt spoons. An old jukebox is plugged in – its arm extended, record poised – ready to drop down forever.

Even junkies don’t break in here any more.

The others are all gone.

Dot feels like she is living in a tall cupboard.

Her flat’s saving grace is its huge sash windows, even if they do only look out on brick.

Twelve-foot-high ceilings – all the better to think!

Ornate cornices and ceiling rose.

It’s taller than it is wide, to be fair. Each night the walls inch forward imperceptibly as she sleeps. One day, she will wake to find the entire building has become a coffin. Dot goes through to her bedroom and ignores her unmade bed, grabs a lighter and goes back to her living room. It doesn’t work. The spark ignites nothing. She pulls out matches. The smell of burnt sulphur soothes. It flares. She drops it into the fireplace. It’s why she picked this flat – it still has a working fireplace. Whoever was here didn’t let them put central heating in. No three-bar gas fire like on most of the other floors. Dot burns things she’s found. Other people’s bills, mostly. It’s satisfying. Red light flickers. It warms her skin only a tiny bit.

Dot opens the shutters to look up at big old gargoyles – they keep her company.

What if workmen don’t come for a bit longer?