I opened the door a few inches. It was a woman.

∗

She had piercing and very intelligent blue eyes, eyes which would certainly have held mine in a strong and steady gaze had I not deliberately avoided them, preferring instead to take in the details of her pale, slightly mottled complexion and rich coppery hair. She smiled at me, not fulsomely, just enough to offer a hint of nice even teeth, and to make me feel that I had to smile back however difficult this might prove to be. I managed to produce what I think must have looked like a sort of sinister half-grin. It was exciting and unusual to find this person standing on my doorstep, but my pleasure was tempered not only by the awkward timing of the interruption but by an uneasy, insistent sense that I had seen the woman somewhere before: that I might, in fact, have been expected to recognize her and even remember her name. In her left hand she was holding a sheet of A4 paper, folded down the middle; her right hand dangled restlessly at her side, as if she was trying to find a pocket in which to hide it.

‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Hello.’

‘I’m not disturbing you, am I?’

‘Not at all. I was just watching the television.’

‘It’s just that – Well, I know we don’t know each other very well or anything, but I thought I might ask you a favour. If that’s all right.’

‘Sounds fine. Would you like to come in?’

‘Thanks.’

As she crossed the threshold to my flat I tried to remember how long it had been since I last had a visitor of any description. Probably not since my mother came down: two, maybe three years. That would also have been the last time I had dusted or vacuumed. What on earth did she mean, anyway, ‘We don’t know each other very well’? It seemed an eccentric thing to say.

‘Can I take your coat?’ I asked.

She stared at me: then I noticed that she wasn’t wearing a coat, just jeans and a cotton blouse. I found this a little puzzling, but managed to hide the fact by joining in her nervous laughter. It was hot outside, after all, and still fairly light.

‘So,’ I said, once we had both sat down. ‘How can I help?’

‘Well, it’s like this.’ And then just as she started to explain, my attention was caught by the liver spots on the back of her hand, and I found myself trying to guess how old she was, because her face, and especially her eyes, still had this questioning, fresh, youthful quality, and going by that alone I would have said that she was in her early thirties at the most, and yet now I was beginning to wonder if she wasn’t nearer my age, or even older, early to mid forties perhaps, and as I was trying to reach a decision on this I realized that she had finished talking and was waiting for me to answer and I hadn’t been listening to a word she’d said.

There was a long and difficult pause. I got up, put my hands in my pockets and walked over to the window. There was nothing for it but to turn round after a few seconds and say, as politely as I could: ‘Do you think you could run that by me again?’

She was taken aback but did her best to hide it. ‘Sure,’ she said, and then started explaining the whole thing again, only this time, now that I had come over to the window, I found that I was facing the television and couldn’t help staring at the swarthy, dark-haired, smiling gentleman on the screen, who had his arm around this little boy, and seemed to be trying so hard to be liked by this kid who was standing rigidly to attention and staring into space and almost pulling away from the avuncular figure next to him, with the permanent smile and the thick black moustache. And there was something so compelling about this scene, something so charged and unnatural, that it made me forget I was supposed to be listening to the woman until she had almost finished, and then I realized that I still didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

There was another pause, longer and more difficult than the first. I thought out my next move carefully before making it: a pensive, nonchalant stroll across to the other side of the room, and then a casual lowering of my buttocks on to the edge of the dining table, so that I was leaning back slightly as I faced her. At which point I said: ‘Do you think you could see your way clear to repeating that, by any chance?’

She regarded me intently for a few seconds. ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking this, Michael,’ she said, ‘but are you feeling all right?’

It was a fair question, by anybody’s standards: but I didn’t have it in me to give an honest answer.

‘It’s my powers of concentration,’ I said. ‘They’re not what they used to be. Too much television, I expect. If you could just … one more time … I’m listening this time. Really, I am.’

It was touch and go for a while. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if she had simply got up and left the room. She looked at her sheet of A4 paper and seemed to be wondering whether to drop the subject altogether, to jack in the clearly thankless task of trying to get me to listen to a few simple words of English. But then, after taking a deep breath, she started speaking again: slow, loud, deliberate. It was obvious that this was my last chance.

And I would have listened at this point, I really would, for my curiosity was aroused, apart from anything else, but my brain was spinning, all my senses were in a whirl, because she had used my name, she had actually called me by my first name, Michael, she had said, ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking this, Michael,’ and I can’t tell you how long it was since anybody had called me by my name, it can’t have happened since my mother came down – two, maybe three years – and the funny thing about it was that if she knew my name, then in all probability I knew hers, or I had known it once, or I was expected to know it, we must have been introduced at one time or another, and I was so busy trying to put a name to her face, and to put her face into a context where I may have seen it before, that I completely forgot to pay any attention to her slow, loud, deliberate speech, so that as soon as she finished I knew we were in for something more, something much more and something much much worse than just another long and difficult pause.

‘You haven’t been listening to a word of this, have you?’

I shook my head.

‘I get the sense,’ she said, rising quickly to her feet, ‘that I’m wasting my time here.’

She stared at me accusingly; and not having much to lose any more, I stared back.

‘Can I ask you something?’

She shrugged. ‘Why not?’

‘Who are you?’

Her eyes widened, and it felt as though she had taken a step away from me, although as far as I could see she didn’t actually move.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I don’t know who you are.’

She gave a mirthless, incredulous smile.

‘I’m Fiona.’

‘Fiona.’ The name dropped into my mind with a heavy thud: there were no echoes. ‘Should I know you?’

‘I’m your neighbour,’ said Fiona. ‘I live just across the hall from you. I introduced myself to you just a few weeks ago. We pass on the stairs … three or four times a week. You say hello.’

I blinked, and came a little closer, gazing rudely into her face. I steeled myself to make an enormous effort of memory. Fiona … I still couldn’t remember having heard the name, not recently, and if it seemed that something about her was starting to take on a distant familiarity, the origins of this feeling were obscure, and tasted less of day-to-day encounters on the staircase than the sensation, perhaps, of being presented with a photograph of a long-dead ancestor, in whose sepia features it might just be possible to detect the ghost of a family resemblance. Fiona …

‘When you introduced yourself to me,’ I asked, ‘did I say anything?’

‘Not much, no. I thought you were rather unfriendly. But then I don’t tend to give up very easily: so I’ve kept trying.’