The cat-piss house wasn’t a house. It was a flat over the secondhand bookshop, which, as far as shops to live above went, was relatively pleasant, except some nights when I’d lie in bed, too awake, and I’d swear I could smell smoke and I’d think of the back wall of the shop, lined with layers and layers of browning paperbacks, and I’d wonder how long it would take to go up if someone tossed a cigarette butt into the bin out the back or left one smouldering in an ashtray, and I’d have to get up and make sure nobody had—three, sometimes four times.

Still, it was cheap and close to the city and it overlooked King Street, and when I’d answered the ad Marnie hadn’t asked any questions or pretended we’d become best friends, which made it easier to ignore the masking tape holding the windows together and the peeling paint, hanging from the ceiling in sheets.

And I did get used to the smell. Sometimes I barely noticed it.

I walked up the narrow flight of stairs, my pulse slowing, unlit cigarette still between my lips, the end gone damp and cold, cat piss and stale smoke mixing with a new perfume of pad Thai and red wine as I dropped my bag on the kitchen bench. I could see a stack of greasy takeaway containers and two burgundy-stained glasses by the sink, a pile of mail by the toaster, a bright pink catalogue and an envelope from the gas company, and a postcard on top at an angle, tossed there as an afterthought.

Welcome to Bali! it sang in yellow, over a blue sky, bluer water, pale-gold sand, a pink and green beach umbrella over two empty pink and green sun loungers.

Nothing remarkable.

Nothing exciting.

But I stopped anyway, cold, my heart speeding up, strange and uneven and hard against my ribs.

I blinked, looking through the kitchen into the silent, empty lounge room. The glare of a streetlight right outside the window cast a phosphorescent glow over the few bits of mismatched furniture we had, and a flashing mobile phone sat plugged into a charger by the television, which meant Marnie had been here and wasn’t far away—probably at the Townie or the Courty, huddled at a table with ten of her closest friends, sharing bottles of pink wine and telling the kind of jokes that weren’t really jokes so much as secret handshakes. We weren’t those kind of flatmates—sometimes we didn’t see each other for weeks—but we could have been, if I made an effort, if I played along. I could have ignored the postcard, wandered down to the pub and found her, sipped pink wine, laughed at her jokes, been that kind of flatmate. I almost wanted to, but something stopped me.

I glanced at it again.