Firstly, let me introduce myself. My name is Jamie Knight. My wife, Kirsty, and I bought your flat from you earlier this year. I will not beat around the bush. We have been having a few problems with Lucy and Chris downstairs and I wanted to ask you if you had had similar experiences.

I also need to know if you ever gave them a key to the flat…

He let it all flow out. By the time he had finished, the letter was nine pages long. He read over it, corrected a few spelling mistakes, and then folded it and put it in an envelope before he changed his mind. He didn’t have any stamps, so he needed to go to the post office.

Leaving the flat, he froze. Lucy was standing in the entrance hall, looking through the post.

He took a few steps towards her. ‘What are you doing?’

She ignored him.

‘I said, what are you doing?’

She rolled her eyes, huffed, then turned and looked at him. ‘I was checking the post. Seeing if there was anything interesting.’ She looked back down at the shelf of mail, where a number old letters for previous occupants and junk mail lay. ‘For us, I mean.’

‘If anything comes for you, I’ll bring it down.’

Lucy turned fully towards him, folded her arms and looked him up and down. ‘Would you really?’

Talking to her made him feel sick. ‘Yes, I would.’

‘How’s Kirsty?’

‘What?’

‘It must be weird, having something living inside you.’ She looked up at a cobweb on the ceiling and said faintly, ‘I would hate it.’

‘I can’t picture you as a mother.’

She stared at him. Her expression was blank, her eyes unfocused. It would have been less creepy if she’d given him daggers, or sneered at him. Instead, she broke into a smile.

‘I have to go,’ she said brightly. ‘We’re expecting company.’

He exhaled.

As she stepped through the front door she paused. ‘Be careful, Jamie,’ she said. And then she was gone.

Chapter Twenty

Twenty

Kirsty and Heather sat in the staff canteen. Heather was going on and on about how Paul had ruined her life.

Kirsty was sympathetic, but she was also tired of hearing about it. Firstly, it wasn’t as if Heather was the first person in the history of the universe to get chucked. It happened every single frigging day, but Heather was acting as if life had conjured up a cruel punishment for her alone; something unique. All that had happened was that Paul had decided that he didn’t want to be with Heather any more. He had been through a trauma. He clearly had things to work out and work through, and Heather was in the way. End of story.