Connie’s mother had hated the fact that the building had been divided. Once upon a time, it would have been a home with walls covered in paintings and rooms crammed with porcelain and crystal. There would have been orchids and ferns, embalmed animals and gilded cages of captured birds. In the attic, there were still crates of discarded items – broken fossils, stuffed and moth-eaten owls and foxes. Her mother would occasionally rifle through them. Once she had found a skeleton – a pair of tiny conjoined monkeys, which she had taken to a museum.

Now Connie stared at the house and the windows met her gaze. Each of them told a story of those inside. Kenneth lived in Flat 1 on the ground floor to the left of the massive front door. The curtains at his bay window were forever closed. People were nosey bastards, he said. The young couple in Flat 2, on the other side of the door, didn’t seem to care and never closed their curtains. They were actors – Eileen was American and Leonard was from Tooting, and in the evening, you could see them flouncing around with their scripts, gesticulating and pontificating.

Johnny’s mother, Dorothy, lived on the first floor in Flat 3, which was above Kenneth. Alone now that Johnny had gone, Dorothy was a stickler for cleanliness and her windows sparkled more brightly than anyone else’s. She and Johnny had had furious arguments about being an artist versus working in a trade. Now her life was quiet.

Connie and her father lived in Flat 4, across the landing from Dorothy. Their windows passed for clean and were hung with thick, blue, velvet curtains that were a little patchy and worn. At the top on the second floor, Mrs Kolinski lived with Eva. She had made their curtains herself. They were beautiful, striped in yellow and gold.

Connie let go of the railings, walked along the path and climbed the stone steps to the front door. She tried to contain her thoughts, to stop them rising to the attic. It held too many memories and now was not the time to think of those. Late at night, when the house slept, that’s when she gave herself the luxury.

Inside the hall, its familiarity soothed her. The black and white tiles, the smell of dust, the empty sconces, the cobwebs hanging from the light fitting – once a chandelier, now a single bulb – and the wide oak staircase that dominated the space which led to the first landing and then switched direction to the second. A red, patched carpet unfurled along the centre and a bannister, roughened by age, ran all the way up while matching panels lined the lower wall.

Despite the wear and tear, the staircase gave an element of grandeur to the house and normally Connie liked to stand at its foot, imagining a procession of ghosts of all the people who had ever lived in the house. Now, though, she shivered at the idea and tried to think of something else but, despite her best intentions, her mind turned back to Johnny.