Today is the day our other housemate will arrive. His name is Jeremy and I know nothing else, not even his last name, because Harper wasn’t forthcoming and I’m trying to masquerade as a very relaxed, easy-to-live-with person who doesn’t anxiously ask too many questions. Oh Jeremy, no last name, no other identifying details? No worries, not a single worry here, no follow-up questions at all. As if it’s normal to agree to live with a guy—in close quarters, sharing a bathroom—and not have at the very least a short dossier on him, just a brief little overview of his family history, his friends, his past relationships, his school marks, his medical history, his politics, his problematic social media posts. And yet, here I am.

I am debating whether to quickly switch bedrooms before he arrives.

Being the grandchild of the owners and the first one to move in, Harper naturally has the biggest room. It has an ornamental fireplace and a built-in robe and space for a queen-size bed and a desk and two bookcases, plus an enormous number of plants, and a few other random items that don’t actually fit but she’s squished them in anyway, like an ugly hat rack that is not currently holding any hats and a heavy mirror propped against a wall. Her room is messy and overflowing with clothes, trinkets, furniture, Polaroid photos, vinyl records, jewellery, a bowl of crystals, books. There were four glasses of half-drunk water, two mugs of half-drunk tea and an open bottle of Powerade on her desk, all dangerously close to her open laptop. It makes me itch to tidy it up. Just a really quick spruce here, a little neatenup there, and a total and complete reorganisation of her closets, that’s all. And I can’t even think about where she’s put things in the kitchen. Mugs and glasses in a bottom drawer, plates and bowls on the very top shelf—it all feels wrong to me, but I am trying my best not to take over.

Harper gave me the choice of the other two rooms when I arrived. I picked the room with better light and fewer ceiling cracks, but it also apparently harbours a mouse. Mystery guy Jeremy has the room next to mine, which is slightly bigger, but it’s a weird shape and has a big, faded stain on the wall that made me immediately think of blood splatter. I started thinking of it as the Murder Room as soon as I saw it, and that kind of name doesn’t just go away once your brain attaches it to a place.

Murder or mouse, it’s a conundrum.

I’m thinking it over in the shower when there’s a knock on the bathroom door.

‘Hello?’ I call out, my voice high and stressed like I’m answering the phone to an unknown number.