Gathering herself, Irene went to the front door and located the buzzer for the top flat. There was no name, just ‘Top flat’. It wasn’t the sort of place anyone would put down roots. When Michael got made redundant from the print company he’d worked with for many years, he’d been given a small pay-out, which was keeping him afloat. When she’d asked him about getting a new job, he told his mother he was ‘assessing his options’. He was forty, but that wasn’t very old these days, was it? Forty felt like nothing much now, not to Irene, anyway.

There was no reply from the top flat. Irene pressed the buzzer again and then got a shock as the front door was suddenly flung open. A young black man with a woolly hat and a beard, a cigarette halfway to his mouth, seemed as surprised to see her and for a moment they both stared at each other.

‘You going in?’ he said after a moment and Irene blurted out, ‘Do you know Michael? He lives in the top flat?’

The man scrunched his brow for a minute then recognition dawned. ‘That fat ginger bloke?’

Irene bristled, but forced herself to remain polite.

‘He’s my son,’ she said. It was answer enough for the other man who avoided her direct gaze then and said, ‘Not for a while. Ask Rowan on the second floor. She usually knows what’s going on.’

Irene thanked him stiffly and, as he bounded down the steps behind her with an air of gratitude to be getting away, she came into the cramped hallway. There were two bicycles to one side, and on the other an ornate and old-fashioned wooden sideboard with a speckled mirror. It was covered in a sea of post and fast-food flyers and, looking around awkwardly, Irene began to rifle through, separating the letters from the flyers.

She quickly found one, then two letters addressed to Michael, but on closer inspection, they looked like junk mail. She put them back.

The steps were steep, and covered with a treacherously rucked carpet, so she climbed slowly but was still a little out of breath when she got to the top floor. She took a moment to collect herself, then rapped on the door to Michael’s flat. She waited, then did it again, but there was no response.

‘Michael? Love?’ she called out, hating how quivery she sounded. Nothing happened.

Reluctantly, she walked back down the stairs and found herself hesitating on the second floor.

She felt silly knocking on doors and speaking to strangers about her business, but, in for a penny, in for a pound, she guessed.

Some very strange sounds were emanating from inside the flat there. It sounded like someone was giving birth, having an argument and playing the drums at the same time.