She said it was important to remember the past in case people forgot – and then she would tell Eva the story of how her family had been rounded up and taken to a concentration camp, but how she had been smuggled out of the country and sent to England on her own. She would describe the Jewish orphanage where she had stayed before a family had taken her in, and the happy times she had had with them, growing up an only child, but loved by her adoptive parents. She would say how she had met Eva’s father, her beautiful face lighting up at the memory of that moment, at a wedding, when their eyes had met across a crowded room. How awkward they both had been. How tentatively they had danced. How quickly they had fallen in love. Two people finding a connection through bleak memories and hopefulness.

Recalling her own past now, Eva remembers scraps and leftovers. She remembers her mother watching her eat and then scraping the saucepan or Eva’s plate. She remembers carbolic soap and cold water, mended clothes and blackened shoes, men calling them names, boys throwing stones.

Her mother had a strong, beautiful face. She played a piano which Eva’s father had bought second-hand and then restored. She gave music lessons to children. She was a dressmaker too, making clothes for wealthy women who would sweep up the stairs to their door. Eva remembers these women standing in their underwear, while her mother, with pins in her mouth, knelt at their feet.

Eva remembers many things.

What she can’t remember is her father – at least, not beyond a soft face and a kind voice. Or her mother’s miscarriage, even though she knows she witnessed it.

What she can’t remember with any clarity is anything before the age of about three or four. Although there are blurs. Images that dance about in time. Impressions. Faceless people. When she tries to recall the details, all she gets is the same precarious sensation as if she’s teetering at the top of a great height. Sometimes, she stands at the window, like she does now, touching the glass. What would it be like to fall, to open the window and lean until she drops and the decision has been taken from her? Perhaps in those split seconds before she hit the ground, the blanks in her head would be filled.

The new tenant is walking towards the house. She is hunched inside her furry coat with her hair loose about her shoulders. Head bent, one hand is in a pocket, the other swinging her bag. She reaches the house and disappears inside.