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pushed the key into the lock he felt a shiver run through him. It was a kind of foreboding, Hadley knew that was a melodramatic word but it was the only one suitable to describe the feeling coursing through him now. He opened the door and stepped inside, flicking on the light in the process. He stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind him, leaning backwards against the partition for a moment, letting out a long slow breath.
    Home at last.
    Hadley shook his head and almost managed a smile.
    Home. This is what you have to call home now.
    He dragged off his coat and hung it up on one of the hooks to his right.
    Home is where the heart is. Home sweet home. How many other fucking clichés could you think of? All of them similarly inappropriate.
    He walked down the short passageway past the first bedroom and the bathroom opposite and turned left into the kitchen where he filled the kettle and switched it on. Perhaps a drink would have been better but he hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol for close to twelve years now. In the time leading up to his sobriety he’d consumed enough for several dozen lifetimes he thought but it had been easier to give up than he’d anticipated and he didn’t want to go back now. Not with his drinking anyway. Any other aspect of his life he would gladly have re-run and experienced again because anything had to be better than the way he was living now. If it could be called a life. It was an existence. Nothing more. Alex Hadley existed in the world he was forced to inhabit now. And he hated it. Just as he hated his home.
    Home. Home was a place where you wanted to be. Somewhere you looked forward to returning to. A place that was yours. Not this.
    He glanced around the small kitchen, spooning coffee into a mug while he waited for the kettle to boil. Even though there wasn’t much on any of the worktops it still seemed overcrowded to Hadley. He felt as if the walls were shrinking around him, closing in. A bit like his life. He nodded to himself as if answering his own unspoken musings. He looked at the kettle again, saw that it wasn’t even close to boiling and slipped through into the sitting room where he switched on the TV. He didn’t care what was on he just wanted to hear something in the background. He stood by the window for a moment gazing out towards the street below, watching people passing by in groups, in couples or alone and he felt an overwhelming sense of detachment. The world they were moving around in wasn’t his world. It was as if he was watching them from some different plane of being. Hadley grunted and shook his head.
    Pretentious bastard.
    He turned and walked back to the kitchen where the kettle had finally deigned to boil. He made himself a coffee and looked in the fridge for some milk.
    ‘Bollocks,’ he murmured seeing that there was none. He’d meant to get some but seeing Jess seemed to have wiped his memory and he’d forgotten just like he forgot so many other things these days. Nothing seemed worth remembering any more. Not even milk. He sighed and put extra sugar in it as he was going to be drinking it black. It was bitter and he winced when he sipped it but it was better than nothing so clutching his mug he headed off towards the second bedroom of the flat and pushed the door open.
    When he’d first moved in, Hadley had determined that this room would be his office. He’d also determined that it would be just a short-term arrangement and that he’d be out of the place and in somewhere better before too long. That particular fantasy had not materialised hence the unpacked boxes still piled in one corner of the room with LIVING ROOM, DINING ROOM and STUDY still scrawled on them in black marker pen. There was a layer of dust covering them too that Hadley was always meaning to wipe away but, as with so much more these days, he never seemed to get around to it. Against one wall there was a small desk with a laptop perched on it and he crossed to the