Gwen laughed. It felt good to see Dad back in the role of being the dispenser of comedy rather than the accidental subject of it. Gwen said goodbye to us, then left. Shortly afterwards, I left too. Mum promised to speak to me every day to keep me updated on how Dad was.

I didn’t tell Mum about Max. I had started making childish bargains with the laws of fate, and decided that the more people I told about Max’s disappearance, the less likely it was that he would come back. I was doing everything I could to keep him alive with me – I had started reading our early messages like they were the pages of a play. I preferred to live with a half-alive version of him than admitting he was gone for good.

I picked up ingredients to make tomato soup that night for dinner – it was a particular kind, the recipe for which I’d spent some time perfecting for the new book. A sweet, smooth, infantile soup that replicated a tin of cream of tomato. It’s what I craved when I was low; when I wanted to remember a time when someone pressed their cool hand on my forehead when they were worried about my health or gave me a time I had to go to bed so I didn’t have to think about it myself. On the way into the supermarket I saw the homeless woman who once told me she liked Party Rings when I asked her if she’d like anything from the shop. I always picked up a packet for her if she was there. A stooping elderly man with a spine arched like a crescent moon unloaded his trolley in front of me at the till: a bag of cat food and three miniature trifles. I wondered if his mum had given him trifle when he was little. Sweet, smooth tomato soup, sugary round rainbow biscuits, mushy ambrosial custard and jelly. The contents of supermarket baskets are surely evidence that none of us are coping with adulthood all that well.

That night, while I was slowly simmering butter, onions and tomatoes in a pan, I heard a loud noise rise through the floorboards. It was a continuous roar, an animal sound. It sounded like rage and resentment – like a war cry and war wounds. Like red-faced football fans of a losing team flooding into a tube carriage after a match. Heavy metal music.

Outside Angelo’s door, the sound was deafening – firework bangs of drums, fingertip-bleeding guitar strums and the cries of monsters and demons. I banged on the door, but the music was so loud even I couldn’t hear the sound of my knock. I could hear Angelo’s voice shouting along to the non-existent melody. I used the soft side of my fists and banged harder, but there was no reply.

I went upstairs and knocked on Alma’s door. She opened it and smiled – her hazel eyes sparkling, her heart-shaped face swathed by a black headscarf covered in blue flowers.

‘Hello, Alma, how are you? How are your chilllies?’

‘Both of us feeling the cold weather, but fine otherwise. How are you?’

‘I’m well, I’m well. Are you being disturbed by the noise downstairs?’

‘What noise?’

‘Angelo, the guy who lives on the ground floor. He’s playing really loud music, can you not hear it?’

Alma leant out of her door frame and turned her head quizzically towards the stairs.

‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘Now I can hear. But not inside. I’m lucky, I think, because I have an extra apartment below me to absorb it.’

‘Yes, exactly, I’m absorbing it.’

‘Oh dear,’ she said.

‘I’m absorbing too much of it, of him. Have you been woken up by him before?’

‘No, never heard him. This is the good thing about being old and deaf.’

‘You’re not old,’ I said. ‘But I’m glad you’re a bit deaf, for your sake. He makes so much noise and he’s been so uncooperative whenever I’ve tried to speak to him about it.’

‘What can I do?’ she asked. ‘How can I make this easier?’

‘Oh, Alma. You’re so lovely.’

‘If the noise becomes too much, you can always sleep on my sofa.’

‘Thank you.’

‘But I suppose you will go to your handsome boyfriend’s house instead,’ she said, her irises catching the hallway light like gemstones. ‘How is he?’ Alma had become obsessed with Max after he once carried her shopping up the stairs for her. Since then, every time I saw her she told me how lucky I was to be with him – what an extraordinary man he was. I decided not to point out that he too was lucky to be with me, a woman who had carried Alma’s shopping up the stairs more times than I could count.

‘He’s fine,’ I said.

‘Soon he’ll be your husband!’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ I said with a chuckle.

She chuckled knowingly too. ‘It’s wonderful, being married.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I mean, I don’t know. But it seems great.’

‘I miss my husband every day. He was not like your lovely boyfriend, he was very set in his ways. But he brought me a cup of coffee in bed every morning until the day he died. Fifty-eight years of being woken up with fresh coffee. Aren’t I lucky?’

‘Very,’ I said. ‘Very, very lucky.’

‘You tell me if you want to stay here, if the noise continues.’

‘Thank you.’

When I went back to my flat, the music was even louder. I tried putting my headphones in and listening to a podcast as I ate dinner, but I could still hear and feel its vibrations through the floor. I opened my laptop and looked up when exactly I could call the council with a noise complaint. I then sat on my sofa, flowering in fury, watching the clock until exactly eleven o’clock when I rang noise patrol, gave them my address and asked them to deal with Angelo. I opened the curtains, stood by the window watching the road and waited for them to arrive. I imagined this was what spinsterhood might be like and I really did find it thrilling.

At 11.20, two figures arrived at the front door. I went downstairs, opened it to them, showed them the entrance to Angelo’s flat then hurried back upstairs. I locked my door and sat on the floor with my chin resting on my knees and waited – they knocked, but he couldn’t hear them. Then they used their fists to bang, but I think he assumed it was me so ignored it. Finally, they shouted repeatedly that they were from the council and, very suddenly, the music stopped and I heard the squeak of his creaky door open. I pressed my ear against the wall and heard the jumble of hands-off, bureaucratic non-threats that belong to the vocabulary of local councils. From Angelo, I heard just one question, which he asked over and over again: ‘Was it her?’

I heard noise patrol leave and waited for Angelo’s door to close, but there was silence. I heard him walk up the stairs. I wished that I had turned all my lights off to make him think that I was asleep. He reached my flat and stood at the door – I could see the shadow of his feet block the hallway light through the crack above the carpet. He remained there, saying nothing, until the hallway self-timer turned the lights off and I lost the outline of his feet. He stayed for a few minutes – in the absence of shadows, my ears attuned to the sound of his breathing. I wondered how long he would stand there, why he stood there, whether he would say anything and if he knew I sat inches away from him. I was too scared to move in case I made a noise, but I also feared I would be sitting in a silent stand-off with him all night. After another minute or so, I heard him walk downstairs and the door to his flat close.

I thought about the day I had moved into this flat. In the first month of living there, I had experienced such deep daily contentment in knowing these square metres were all mine. But now, I felt the omnipresence of an intruder. I felt unwelcome and unsafe in its walls. I felt like I had been infested with cockroaches and there was nothing I could do to get rid of them. I had to either live with it or move. It was then I knew that there are a handful of situations that, regardless of how happy you are without a partner, loot your single status of all its splendour. One of them is dealing with a nightmare neighbour on your own.

I wanted to call Max. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted his straightforward, tough advice and his firm, unrelenting affection. I picked up my phone to call him, but instead I read through our old messages to each other and watched how he had suddenly grown cold and formal before he disappeared. I went to his name and number in my phone contacts and stared at it, looking for a sign of animation, like I was watching someone in a coma, waiting for a sign of life.