and presses the on/off switch.
‘I don’t like to leave it on standby,’ she says. ‘I don’t know why I did.’
‘Can we see what channel you were watching?’
She doesn’t reply. Her attention has been caught by something directly below the TV on its supporting glass table.
Joe says, ‘If you don’t normally leave it on standby, you could have been watching it when you went into your fugue state. We might be able to pinpoint a particular programme that triggered you.’
Felicity looks up, uncertain.
‘Can it do any harm?’ he says.
She switches the TV back on. They wait until the picture emerges of a back alley in an American city. A woman runs screaming towards the camera.
‘The horror channel,’ she says. ‘I’ve never watched that.’ She bends to pick something up from the glass table. A pair of spectacles in a brown case. ‘And these aren’t mine.’
Joe takes them from her as screaming fills the room. Felicity switches off the TV and the screaming stops. He opens the case and peers through the glasses. Distance vision.
‘I don’t wear glasses,’ she says. ‘I have perfect vision.’
‘Could a friend have left them?’
‘No. No one comes here.’
Joe says, ‘Are you sure no one else has keys?’
She shakes her head.
‘There’s something I want to do before I go. Will you indulge me?’
She looks wary.
‘I want to look in your loft.’
Her eyes open wide. ‘My loft? What on Earth for?’
He doesn’t want to answer that. To answer it would be to frighten her.
‘It will set my mind at rest. Please?’
She shrugs and he leaves the room. He is tall enough to reach the catch on the trapdoor. The loft ladder glides down soundlessly. The space revealed by the loft light is low, with barely enough headroom for Joe to stand upright. Along one edge is a neat line of packing cases and holdalls, standing opposite them a row of plastic storage boxes. He can see a pair of skis in a canvas carry bag and a tool kit. At the far end, pushed against one wall and barely visible in the shadows, is a large trunk-shaped object covered in old curtains. Felicity’s loft is as neat as her house and were the circumstances different, he would ask her, not entirely in jest, if she dusts up here.
‘Joe, why are you in my loft?’
‘Give me a minute.’ He begins to crawl along the plyboard floor, away from the curtain-wrapped trunk. A cold-water tank ahead of him is lagged to prevent freezing in winter and beyond that is the dividing wall between Felicity’s loft and that of the next house along. He has a suspicion, and until it is laid to rest, he won’t be easy. He has reached the wall. He uses his phone as a torch and sees that the wall is made of plywood. He pushes it gently and it falls away, landing with a clatter on the floor of the next loft.
‘Joe!’
He turns to see Felicity’s head appear in the hatch and waits until she has crawled to join him. Together they look to the loft space that stretches the entire length of the terrace. His torch isn’t strong enough to reach the end, but he remembers a row of half a dozen or so houses. If the other dividing wall is also plywood, then six sets of neighbours, and people with keys to their houses, can access Felicity’s home.
‘I had no idea,’ she says.
‘When cottages like these were built, people didn’t need their lofts,’ he says. ‘They didn’t have enough stuff to worry about storage. The roof void is just an empty space at the top of the house that nobody bothered about. It’s only in the last few decades that people have started cutting access doors and building dividing walls.’
‘Anyone can get into my house,’ she says.
‘Come on,’ he tells her. ‘We’ve got work to do.’
* * *
‘Were you a boy scout?’ she asks, a half-hour later.
He has found several empty cans in her recycling basket and using a screwdriver from the tool kit in his car, punched a hole in each. They hang now, on string, from the loft door like a cut-price Christmas decoration.
‘Anyone tries to open that hatch tonight, the racket will wake you up in an instant and scare the crap out of them,’ he says. ‘You dial 999 and leave via your bedroom window, waiting in your car for the police to arrive. Tomorrow, I’ll put a heavy-duty bolt on that door and you need to get on the