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anything.
    I just learnt my lines, repeating them to myself in the mirroras I cleaned the bathroom that is shared by both the downstairs flats. Mine and Mouse’s.
    I scrubbed the toilet until there was not a trace of Mouse’s footprints left. He likes to squat.
It’s what they do in India
, he tells me whenever I complain.
    I cleaned the tiles around the shower until they were sparkling.
    I washed down the floor.
    I wiped the basin until it gleamed.
    And I played out my entire scene five times.
    When I was finished, when I had learnt all I had to learn, I dumped the dirty sponges at Mouse’s door, and I waited for Louise to go to work, for her footsteps down the stairs.
    Louise is a sub-editor. She works shifts. When she is on the morning shift, she leaves at eight, when she is on the afternoon shift, two, and the evening shift, nine. I knew these times by heart. I still know them.
    That morning she was late, and I stood, nervously, there on that bottom step, unsure as to whether I should go up, unsure as to whether I should knock on their door in the hope she had already left.
    Louise does not like her job. She has told me this often. They moved to this city a year ago, and she was forced to take whatever was available.
    It was Anton who wanted to come here
, she once said, brushing her hair out of her face and then letting it fall back again.
He thought there would be more opportunity, for his scripts
, and she sighed.
But he is still broke and I am still supporting him
.
    She would tell me she had no one else with whom shecould talk.
I hope you don’t mind
, she would say as I opened the door to her standing awkward, unsure, a bottle in one hand, a pack of cigarettes in the other.
    Once she told me Anton’s work hadn’t been the only reason for the move.
I had a miscarriage
, she said.
I kind of fell apart
.
    Another time she told me it was because Anton had had an affair, and she had looked at me, just for a moment, as she poured herself another drink.
    Who knows?
Marco said when I asked him what he thought the real reason was, and he looked up impatiently from the pile of notes he had brought home to read.
Who cares?
    He always found Louise irritating. He had little patience for her endless talk about her problems. It was self-indulgent.
    Bourgeois
, I would say to tease him.
    Precisely
, he would say, but he would usually smile back.
    He had even less time for Anton.
A sleaze-bag
, and he would not look at me.
A spoilt rich kid dabbling in the arts
.
    And each time he heard the footsteps from upstairs followed by a knock on our door, he would roll his eyes.
Don’t
, he would mouth silently as I would get up, ignoring him, opening the door to see her standing there.
    I looked up to the landing at the top of the stairs and closed my front door behind me.
    Before you make any kind of decision, you should talk to him
, the doctor had told me, and I had nodded my head as though it was a given.
    In the closed stillness of the corridor outside their flat, I knocked once, hoping she had somehow gone without me hearing her.
    But she hadn’t.
    She was the one who answered the door. She was the one with whom I talked. The two of us, out on the landing, Louise picking at splinters in the wood, staring down at her feet as she told me they had been fighting again.
    I wish I had the courage to just go
, she said, her voice hushed, quiet, because she did not want him to hear. Anton, just one thin wall away.
I wish I was more like you. You just took action. It wasn’t working and you made your decision
.
    And she looked out across the overgrown garden, out across the low shrubs that cling to the side of the hill behind these flats, their roots gripping the sandy soil, only just, as she told me how lonely she felt.
    If it wasn’t for you, I don’t know what I would do
, and she lit a cigarette, holding it awkwardly in her left hand, the smoke drifting up and into my eyes.
He tells me