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down the uneasy feeling that nightfall would soon be upon them. She’d draw her curtains early tonight, before it even got dark. She would be safer then. Cocooned.
    As she stepped in through the front door, Tina was immediately greeted by Rascal, mewing at her ankles, winding his polar-white body around Tina’s legs.
    ‘Rascal! What are you doing here?’ said Tina stooping to pick the cat up. She nuzzled her face against the animal’s neck. ‘How did you get out of the kitchen?’ As Tina walked down the hallway to the kitchen her mind went over the routine of that morning. Rascal was always confined to the kitchen during the day when Tina was at work. His passion for bringing his kill into the house and dropping it on the floor had meant his days of having access to all areas were gone. The live mouse had been the prize too far.
    Tina remembered closing the door so the cat couldn’t venture anywhere else in the house. It was always the last thing she did before going out. She wondered if perhaps today she had forgotten to do it, what with all the upset of the night before. To be honest, she couldn’t remember. It was something she did every day: a matter of habit. She couldn’t recall doing it or not doing it. Maybe Dimitri had gone back into the kitchen for something. But she didn’t think so.
    Tina felt her mouth dry and the reflex action to swallow stilted. Did that mean someone had been in the house today? Other than her leaving the kitchen door open, it was the only other explanation. They certainly wouldn’t have been able to come through the front door, but she would check with Mr Cooper anyway, just in case he had seen something. The windows were all double-glazed units and all were locked closed. There was no way anyone could have got in through a window. That left only the back door.
    Striding into the kitchen and over to the half-glazed UPVC door, Tina rattled the handle. Locked. Definitely locked. No, she must have forgotten about the internal door and left it open or not shut it properly. Was it any wonder she wasn’t thinking straight after the night she’d had.
    Later that evening, plating an extra dinner up, Tina popped next door to Mr Cooper. As was customary, she knocked on the back door and then let herself in. Tina had long given up telling him to keep the door locked. He was stuck in his ways, had never locked the door in all the time he had been there, in excess of fifty years – as he liked to remind her – so he didn’t see why he should now. Of course, he would lock it at night time, but not during the day. He wasn’t going to let society turn him into a jibbering wreck, afraid of his own shadow.
    ‘Mr Cooper!’ Tina called out, knowing full well he’d be sitting in the living room with the telly on loud. She could hear it blaring out now. She was thankful, as ever, that their dividing wall separated her living room from his staircase. She pitied the neighbours on the other side of him whose living room was back to back with Mr Cooper’s. Tina placed the dinner plate on the kitchen table and went further into the house.
    The usual smell of mustiness, rather like a charity shop, assailed her nostrils, as did the smell of the downstairs toilet. Mr Cooper lived on the ground floor now, the dining room converted into a bedroom and what once would have been the scullery now a wet room.
    Tina knocked loudly on the living-room door and pushed it open. ‘Hello, Mr Cooper.’
    He looked up from his winged back chair and smiled a toothless mouth to her.
    ‘Hello, love. You all right?’ Mr Cooper smoothed his hand over his head, a mixture of grey wispy hairs and a balding patch, speckled with age spots. Ever the gentleman, he made to stand up, one hand grasping his walking stick and the other trying to gain leverage from the arm of the chair.
    Tina waited until he had risen slightly and indicated to the other chair for her to sit. He really didn’t need to, but it was an old habit he