I see him as soon as I emerge from the alley.
A male figure. Standing in the street in front of our little terrace, looking at our house.
I stop dead. Neither of our neighbours have any lights on and Leo, as usual, has left on every light in every room. But, irrespective of the lights, I know instinctively that he’s there for us. For me.
I drop back into the alley and peer around, clutching my bag. He’s wearing a baseball cap, under which long-ish hair spills out at the back. Tall. Rangey, I’d say, although he’s wearing a lightweight parka and it’s hard to tell. I can only see the side of his face, and it’s too dark to make out much detail – but I don’t think this is anyone I know; anyone with a good reason to be visiting my house at this time of night.
I pull back again and get out my phone to call Leo, fingers fumbling. Is Leo safe inside? Ruby? I peer round one final time before calling, just as the man turns and gets into a small car, parked next to mine.
He drives off, turning left down Frognal Rise.
I wait for a long time, but he doesn’t return.
I remember the man outside my work at Plymouth. Same build, same baseball cap low over his face. Fear worms in my chest.
Is it the same person?
I scroll through my mental Rolodex of the men who’ve messaged me lately on Facebook, but it’s been several days since I looked at my inbox and besides, none of them use real photos.
After a long wait, I leave the alleyway and run towards the house, heart in my mouth.
As I reach the gate, I see something yellow lashed to next door’s front gate. Something angular, fixed – I stop in the middle of the street. It’s a For Sale sign.
Of course. They told us last month they were putting their house on the market.
I allow myself to smile. The man was just looking at a house he’d seen online. Nothing more. There are many millions of baseball-cap-wearing men in the world. The weirdo in Plymouth, hundreds of miles away, has nothing to do with this man – this perfectly innocent man, who could quite feasibly end up being my new neighbour.
I slide my phone back into my bag and stand at the bottom of the steps up to our miniature front garden, waiting for my breathing to slow down. There’ll probably be a stream of people coming to stare at the house in the coming days, before viewings begin. I’d better get used to it.
Then it comes to me, suddenly – perhaps because I’m already primed for threat, perhaps because it’s so unusual – that our dining room light is on too, along with all the others. Leo’s been in there.
My heart starts racing again. Why?
Because he needed to find something of his.
Because Ruby went in there before bed.
For any one of a million reasons, none of which involve him climbing across stacks of Granny’s stuff to find the papers I hid last week, which he couldn’t possibly know were missing because he doesn’t even know they exist.
But I must get them out of there, I realise now. Out of the house. I should never have kept them under our roof in the first place: even with my cupboard locked, it was never worth the risk.
I’m going to have to do something about this whole hoarding business. I think Leo’s right.
Tomorrow morning, before Leo and Ruby come down, I’ll put it all in my bag and take it to work. I’ll lock it in my drawer until I can bring myself to throw it all out, which I should have done years ago. Those stupid things, those testaments to the final moments of my old life: they could destroy everything I hold dear now. What was the point?
As I open the front door I can hear Leo talking to Ruby, who’s recently started arriving downstairs at ten o’clock, claiming she’s been awake since bedtime. （She never has.） I imagine my little girl right now, pink-cheeked with the sleep she claims not to have had, negotiating hard with her beloved daddy.