On the other side is a woman in her forties, brown frizzy hair stranded with grey and held back by a hair elastic at the nape of her neck. She is sallow, angular, but her face has a certain something, a slender nose and thin lips, an alert look in her wide-set eyes. She could be East European or Middle Eastern, I think – there’s an indefinability in what she is – she looks to me like the kind of woman who would have been a beauty if she had ever, at any stage of her life, had any economic resources. As it is, I suspect that when she was a young child, people might have said, ‘She’ll be a looker when she grows up.’ Whereas now they say, ‘I bet she was pretty hot when she was young.’ Somewhere in between, she missed her chance.

The woman lifts her right hand and tucks some crinkled hair behind her ear in a way that implies self-consciousness.

‘Angela,’ Dalmar says politely. I detect weariness in his tone.

‘Dalmar,’ Angela replies. Then she hesitates, as if she can’t quite remember why she has knocked on the door in the first place, or as though she considers her news slightly awkward. ‘Mr Chadha called, he needs access Friday morning. You want to leave your key with me when you go to work that morning? I’m in all day?’ She does that annoying, rising-interrogative thing that a lot of my students did. It’s forgivable in an adolescent but I can’t bear it when grown women do it. Why make yourself sound insecure?

I see Dalmar hesitate. Mr Chadha – landlord, I presume – must have his own set of keys to each room. But it will seem insulting to Angela to refuse her offer, and there’s no way he can change shifts at this late stage to make sure he is here on Friday morning. He’s back on days by then.

‘Okay, thank you,’ Dalmar says, ‘that’s very kind of you.’

‘I won’t touch anything,’ Angela says very quickly.

‘No, no, of course, I wasn’t, I wouldn’t think …’ Dalmar replies with an excess of haste that implies that was exactly what he was thinking.

Angela flushes, as if insulted. ‘Well, then …’ she says, half turning, then turning back. ‘Of course if you’d rather …’

‘No, no, that would be great, what time should I?’

‘Oh, knock any time after seven a.m.,’ she says, with a sudden laugh. ‘I’ll be dressed by then!’

Out of sheer embarrassment, Dalmar closes the door in her face.