When I arrived at the corner of their street, I went slower still, but eventually I had to arrive at their building. I looked up at it for a long moment, up at the top windows where the tall trees from the private garden square reflected, and I looked along the road at the pillars and railings lined up in perfect order. Above the windows and the edges of the roof there were moulded little flourishes of decoration, careful strokes of beauty, the whole road sculpted to calm and reassure, to convince us of our civilisation. I didn’t want it to civilise me so I climbed the steps to their door and stood there looking at the mouth of their letter box.

You know what I did next. I took the cards out of my jacket and I opened the letter box and I pushed them through. Then I turned my back and sat down on their steps. I sneezed. I could smell cut grass from the gardens. The sun was shining on the other side of the street, on the curved walls and pillars, the cream plaster like the bonded writing paper you might ink with a last will and testament. Each morning, for the foreseeable, Emily and Andrew would come down these steps and start their new day.

I hated them for that, but I didn’t hate them enough.

When I got up again I jabbed several of the doorbells belonging to the other flats in the building until a Slavic-sounding voice answered.

‘I posted the wrong letter,’ I said. ‘Could you let me in to pick it up?’

‘I’m sorry. Who are you?’

‘I’m a friend of Emily and Andrew’s.’

‘Sorry. Don’t know you. Can’t let you in.’

I rang the doorbell again. And again. Someone else answered.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know you.’

‘Please.’

‘I am calling the police if you don’t go.’

‘Please,’ I said. ‘This is life or death.’

‘Stop ringing, please. You need to go away.’

I walked back down the steps and looked up at the building. ‘Hello! Hello!’ I shouted. An open sash window dropped like a guillotine.

‘Please!’ I shouted. ‘I posted some letters I need to get back.’

No one came. The street was empty. The windows were blank. I went back to the doors and pressed the buzzers for all the flats. Nothing. I looked into the lens of the camera and held my hands out.

‘I just need my letters back!’ I shouted. ‘I just need you to let me in. You don’t need to be scared of me! You don’t need to shut yourselves away!’

When I went back down the steps and looked back up again, I saw a man’s figure retreat from the window that had shut on me.