Alison had not been able to find Clio’s phone last night. It was almost as though she didn’t want them to find it, she’d said, refusing to let Ruth go back into the house to look. The most sensible course of action would have been to go back and look herself, but Ruth was here in the city instead. It’s like I’m drunk, she thought, and grinned, wide and loony. I’m making the decisions a drunk person would make. Actually, she felt a little bit drunk. Her senses were all a bit off. ‘A bit skew-whiff!’ she said out loud, calling it up the flight of stairs to Clio’s neighbour. ‘Ha!’

The door, the door. She fumbled for the key (thinking momentarily that it would be hilarious if she’d come all this way, paid all that money and not brought the key) and opened it. She pushed it with the palm of her hand, had it bounce back on her twice, before she stepped into the dark hallway.

Her nose adjusted before her eyes did – something was sweet and rotten in here. It would be fruit, bought before the trip to Ruth’s house, or mould growing in a coffee cup somewhere. It occurred to Ruth that she was probably the person whose job it was to clean this all up, now.

She’d never been sure where the light switch was. The cramped hall was dark and full of danger; shelves overflowing with books, mysterious stacked objects, what looked like a roll of carpet. There was an old glass lamp, mock art deco, perched on some sort of dresser, and she reached along its flex for a switch. Kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and living room swam into focus through their variously open doors. Tiny ornaments balanced precariously along each doorframe, against the dirty glass up there; little coloured bottles in coordinated rainbows, small carved figurines. The smell seemed to be coming from every room.

What did you do with all these things? All the bits that a person had pulled around themself over the years? Things that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else. Ruth didn’t want them in her house, that much she knew. Maybe there were people you could pay, who would come in and remove everything, and clean the place too? That seemed like a good use of money. She tripped over a stack of what turned out to be sheet music, which spilled and fanned itself over the rug. She swore out loud, filling the fetid air with it.

People would want to come here, of course. All the people who had loved Clio would want to come and take a small thing, one of those little bottles, a lamp, a fusty cushion. She couldn’t just refer them to whichever charity shop she picked first from the phonebook.