And then I just sit there, a little dazed, my blood diluted by equal parts adrenaline and Scotch. It’s just me and the hum of traffic floating in from the road outside and that guy in the painting and Thomas’s computer.

I think of the bond and the information he claims to want to share with me tomorrow night as the mouse arrow finds its way up to his search history. What if he knows something that could really help me? And what if I could learn whatever it is without having to see him again?

What if everything I need is right here?

Click.

I scan down through the list of sites but it’s all just news. Nothing about a bond. Or Genovexa. Or Requiem.

I look down to the ribbon at the bottom of his screen, to the blue iMessage icon. Maybe there’s something there. He said that he’d called in a favour…

So I point the arrow over it and click. Up comes the message window. I scroll down the left-hand column, scanning for anything that looks vaguely interesting.

But, again, there’s nothing about the bond.

And strangely, nothing from me either.

Just random chats with a guy called Adam about a game of squash.

And then there, a little way down is a message that begins, Thomas, please talk with me, is not fair that you… It came in a week ago.

I can’t see the rest of the text because it’s too long for the preview, so I click on it to read the whole missive.

Is not fair that you disappear. We liked each other, no? Bisous.

Interesting.

I didn’t think Thomas had ghosting in him. He always seemed more of the dumpee than the dumper to me. Which just goes to show, you never can tell. I remember him in the line at the supermarket, grinning down at his messages. Was he smiling down at a text from her?

I scroll through the many messages she’s sent him. She likes him, poor girl. And he’s ignoring her.

Tu me manques.

Baby?

Why you don’t reply?

God, what a knob.

But then three messages away from that last one, I see something. It’s dated just after Thomas and I met in that laundromat and it reads, Don’t you miss this? I stare at an image of naked breasts exposed, back arched, head slightly tilted. Wavy dark hair.

But the words are not the reason I am frozen in place. The sexual nature of that picture is not the reason that my stomach is churning. Because I don’t really give a fuck if he’s sexting other people; we’re not in a relationship. And I don’t want to be in one either.

No, the problem is far bigger than that.

I recognise that girl.

It’s my neighbour.