Terry will tell her she’s a mug. What’s the point of slaving away for less than she gets on social, he’ll say, less than he can give her for pocket money, another hamster on the big wheel. Why belittle herself? Or, he’ll think she’s trying to be like them: the quiet people moving in next door. Or not them specifically, but the girl two doors down who leaves for work every morning at five-thirty in Manolo Blahnik heels, and a taxi. Or any one of their other neighbours who are out all day, doing, and from their well-kept houses look at them, her and Terry – not doing – as if they’re scum to be picked off their polished railings.

Attached to the new neighbours’ balustrade, there is already a beautiful pale blue bicycle. It has one of those old-fashioned baskets into which you need to balance things like French baguettes or fresh flowers. The slim woman and her rugby husband stand behind it on their new doorstep and wave goodbye to the removal van driver. The woman is white blonde, her hair long and loose, dancing around her elbows. She has that sharp, petite nose you see on the BBC, and the kind of skin tone that suggests it’s regularly deepened by trips to sunny mountaintops and sprawling beaches. Simone sees her visibly breathe in, as if inhaling an imagined future. And the man breathes out, as though unburdened of his charge to provide it. Then together they turn and go inside where Simone can still see them in the front room, standing close together, encircled by boxes, and, she imagines, brightly coloured dreams.

Terry is not dreaming. He’s not sleeping much at all. He’d had no idea how difficult the move from the estate was going to be, and Simone wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.

Looking up, there is a movement of curtain from the bedroom window of their flat. It’s possible that Terry has seen her standing there across the street. It’s possible that he has been watching her for a while. Watching her watching.

She’ll go in in a minute.

She’ll just finish her cig.

By then the new neighbours might be done with their boxes and their quiet.

Simone takes one final inhalation of smoke. The nicotine should steady her, but as soon as she throws the stub to the ground her hands feel empty. Looking up at the flat, her stomach tightens. She crosses over slowly. The road is devoid of further distraction. On the corner, there’s a gastro pub where at lunchtime there are trendy mums with stylish buggies, or artsy professionals, not in suits; but it is now too late for lunch and too early for the school kids and not even a floaty-skirted cyclist to delay her passage home. As she reaches her doorstep, however, searching inside her bag for the key, the door to the new neighbours’ house flies open, and the woman she has been watching appears – blondeness and shininess and a gentle scent of coconut. Up close, an audaciousness Simone hadn’t noticed before dances across the woman’s lips, like the edges of laughter. She’s holding a wrapped box. Remaining on her doorstep, the woman lifts a hand in greeting, then leans boldly over the dividing iron boundary.