The maintenance man knocked again as he pushed the door to flat 10 halfway open. It was dark inside, the flat still shrouded from the early morning sunlight by the curtains. A musty smell filled his nostrils.

‘Hello?’ he called into the silence. ‘Building maintenance; we’ve had a leak reported. Anyone home?’

No reply. He hit the light switch by the door but nothing happened.

Click, click.

He tried two more times, frowning. Still nothing. He pulled a small torch from his pocket and pointed the narrow beam inside. There was a rustling sound as he opened the door the rest of the way, a pile of papers and leaflets that had been sat behind it shuffled out of the way like a messy deck of cards. Glancing down at them, he saw a mixture of residents’ newsletters and flyers mingled in with the post, that some enterprising souls must have gotten past the secure entrance to deliver.

He walked down a short hallway, sweeping the torchlight left and right, calling out as he went. The hallway led to an open-plan space incorporating the kitchen, dining and living areas. He was no interior decor expert, but the place definitely had something of a retro feel to it.

A faint hint of an odour hit his nostrils and he stopped to look around. He wrinkled his nose in disgust as he bent over a coffee cup on the nearby bench and sniffed. Spots of brownish green mould clung to it and he stepped back out of range of the smell, noticing the thick cloak of dust on the bench as he replaced the cup in the spot that it had been protecting. He made no effort to mask his footsteps as he looked around, calling out to minimise the surprise to any occupants, but nobody responded.

He went back to the open area that accounted for most of the floor space and looked around, mentally calculating where the leak would be located from what he’d seen of the layout downstairs. As it turned out, the answer was glaringly obvious when he saw the pool of water on the kitchen floor over by two white appliances – a fridge and a freezer, he presumed. They were short stocky units, a little above waist height, pale cream in colour with matching chrome handles, doors closed on both, but the water pooled on the floor was a giveaway as to which one was the culprit. Maybe a power failure had caused it to thaw? The contents could have leaked through a gap in the door seal. The model looked like one he’d had in his first flat years ago.