Kate’s Fiat isn’t parked out front. I don’t know what car Shaun drives, but Heidi assured me they were both helping out at the fayre, so I reckon I’m ninety-nine per cent safe. In any case, all their lights are off – at least the ones I can see.

I walk purposefully over to the entrance of the block and go into the same stairwell I walked in with Bella last week. I stand before the same two heavy-duty wooden doors with their safety-glass panels. I’m really regretting not swiping Bella’s key when I had the chance last week. It was right there on the hall table when I went in to use the bathroom. It would have been so easy to slip it into my pocket. Too late now. I’ll just have to improvise. It’s a rough neighbourhood so it’s not out of the question for them to have a break-in. But it would have been less traumatic all round if I could have let myself in and out without arousing any suspicion.

There’s no obvious way to get in here – no windows or anything, so I walk out of the stairwell and back down the path. The windows at the front are too exposed – I can’t see anyone else in the road, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone looking this way. I can’t take the risk. Instead, I follow the narrow path and slip around the side of the building that’s hidden from view by a row of scrubby bushes.

I can hardly believe it when I see one of the small top-light windows on the ground floor is open. It’s part of a larger opaque glass window that I’m guessing is the Morrises’ bathroom. I walk up to the dark glass, take my torch out of my pocket and stand up on my tiptoes. Shining the torch through the small open window, I’m faced with the very same bathroom that I went into last week. I allow myself a small smile of relief. The open part of the window is far too small for me to crawl through, but at least I know that the window I’m about to break will lead into the Morrises’ flat, and not some neighbour’s who might be at home.

I pull on my gloves and take a fragment of ceramic spark plug out of my pocket. It’s something I researched on YouTube – how to break a window quickly and safely. The video is supposedly to give people a way to get out of their car if they ever get trapped – but apparently it works just as well on any window. Anyway, I’m about to find out.