I arrived mid-morning when I knew the coast would be clear, trying to look casual, because after all, everyone locally would have seen me coming and going for years. But my heart was hammering as I tripped gaily down the steps, unlocked the door and stepped into the quiet flat – the quiet dark flat, for the back wall seemed to have been curtained off with thick, opaque blue polythene, presumably against builder’s dust. His renovations must have been more extensive than I’d thought.

Considering how well I knew the flat, it felt very odd to be standing there in the silent semi-dark – but of course I had not been there alone since Petruschka went through the great cat flap in the sky.

In fact, it was ages and ages since I’d even stayed overnight. Years. I’d always preferred to sleep in my own place, to love and then be alone, as it were, and so had Sergei, fortunately, besides being a morning person like me, and actually when I thought about it we were similar in more ways than I’d ever have dreamed of. Besides, if I had to stay over in London, I preferred to go to Linny’s, where I could have a luxurious little en suite to myself and come and go as I pleased.

Wondering if he’d turned it into an office, I stuck my head into the tiny boxroom, but it was still a rather sparsely furnished bedroom. There was a photo of Sergei with Grigor on the chest of drawers, and clothes hanging in the wardrobe that didn’t look like Sergei’s sort of thing at all, which was odd …

Grigor couldn’t be living here, could he? I mean, Sergei had found it difficult enough sharing his personal space with a cat, let alone another ego. (Though come to think of it, cats have pretty big egos, too.) Maybe Sergei simply let his protégé store some things here, or Grigor was between flats, or something?

Puzzled, I went out of the room and back to my normal habitat where my own glossy picture stared back at me from a mirrored Venetian frame surrounded by a collection of empty-eyed masks, while huge black-and-white arty photos of Sergei flying about through the air in every possible pose adorned all the other walls. He had thigh muscles like you wouldn’t believe.