I dig the master key out of my pocket. Under usual circumstances, we would give the tenant twenty-four hours’ notice, but in this case we’ve already sent all the letters we could and it’s clear they’ve all been going unanswered. I have to push hard to get the key to slide into the lock; the mechanism seems gummed up. Behind me, the younger bailiff is still holding the tenant’s file as I twist the key and push at the door with the flat of my palm. The pile of letters twists like a doorstop underneath, a great wedge of paper trying to hold us back, but with my shoulder I can lever the door open and it does so, an inch, half a foot. Then it jams completely. That’s when I start to feel a bit sick.

I see what’s jamming it. The safety chain is stopping the door in its tracks, a safety chain that someone has fastened from the inside. And that’s when, behind me, the bigger bailiff of the two, the one who must have seen so many things in his time, says in a voice that has gone low and gravelly, ‘We need to call the police.’

It feels like for ever before they arrive. It’s as though I’m in a dream the whole time that we’re waiting. The bailiffs and I hardly speak. I know I should try to contact Abayomi back at the office and let him know what’s going on, but I can’t bring myself to do it, not yet. I tell myself we don’t even know for sure, I tell myself this could all look much worse than it is, and that once the police get here and we actually enter the flat – this flat I’m responsible for, which is allocated to me and no one else – we’ll find out it really is nothing, all a big misunderstanding and the worst thing we’ll have to worry about is wasting police time.

There are blue lights strobing outside and, moments later, five of us crowded outside the flat in the tiny stairwell. Silently, the younger bailiff hands me back Ms Jones’s file.

The first officer – a man – takes one look at the jammed door, the avalanche of post and says, ‘You were right to call us.’ Those words should be reassuring, telling me that we’ve done exactly the right thing, but instead I’m suffocated with guilt all over again.

I can’t stop it now, what we are about to find. A female police officer is fiddling with the security chain using some instrument they must have brought with them specially, and it only takes a second before there’s a crack and the chain falls loose with a shrill jangle and now the officer can push the door right open, backing up all the post behind it.