‘No. Show me where they are.’

I gestured to the compartment about the oven fan. He was so tall he could open it on his tiptoes. He reached in, pulled out the three parcels one by one and put them on the floor. He spluttered bemusedly in Italian. ‘I only took three,’ I said, like a surly teenager defending something indefensible.

‘You opened them?!’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You went through my things?’

I had angered a psychopath who now had direct access to a handy selection of machetes. I allowed my eyes to quickly flicker to the knife block on my kitchen counter to assess whether I could reach for it with one quick motion.

‘I didn’t have any other choice. You made everything so difficult for me, I wanted to make something difficult for you.’

‘What is the matter with you?’

‘What is the matter with YOU?’

‘You cannot steal things!’

‘You wanted me to do this.’

‘AH?!’ He snarled in confusion.

‘Yes. You did, you wanted me to lose it. And I did. I snapped. You win.’

‘I did not do this.’

‘This is all because of you!’ I said, flinging my be-gloved hands into the air and inadvertently spraying him with drops of water. ‘This is ALL your fault. Why have I never ever, ever had a problem with my neighbours before I lived above you? Why did I use to love living here and now I dread coming home?’

‘You,’ he said, pointing at me with narrowed eyes, ‘are crazy.’

‘No I’m not.’

‘Yes you are.’

‘It means nothing when a man says that to me any more because I know the truth. You can say it as many times as you like, it will have no effect on me.’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘It means nothing, Angelo. I know the truth. I know what happened. I know how you behaved. The more you say it, the saner I feel.’ I pulled the rubber gloves off.

‘Fucking crazy.’

‘Don’t believe you,’ I said, edging closer to him. He stepped back like a frightened animal.

‘You’re FUCKING CRAZY!’

‘I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. I KNOW THE TRUTH. I AM NOT FRIGHTENED OF THAT WORD ANY MORE.’

‘YOU’RE A CRAZY FUCKING BITCH,’ he shouted.

I pushed him and he stumbled backwards into my fridge. I heard pickle jars clank as he landed against it. He straightened up – I was inches away from him and looking at his eyes, bulbous in shock. He smelt of a recent shower and the toiletries that teenage boys find in their Christmas stocking in a gift set. I searched for evil in his face – for signs of violence, detached cold-bloodedness. The push had felt good, but I needed more. I wanted to use more of my anger on him, more of my body on him – show him that he couldn’t scare me. Show him that this was my home as much as his – that he couldn’t force me out. I wanted to hit him – swipe my hand cleanly across his cheek, to both leave something on him and take something of his. But I’d never hit anyone before.

I pressed my mouth up against his, so hard that I pushed through the cushion of his plump lips and could feel the bone-hardness of his gums. I pulled away, horrified, and examined his face like a stab wound.

He pushed me back towards the sink as he kissed me. His hands grasped both my cheeks, then his fingers dragged through my hair, pulling it out of its ponytail. He kissed hungrily along my jaw, my chin, then moved down my neck. He tugged my vest top off, threw it on the dish rack and pressed me in towards him, running his hands up and down the juts and curves of my bare shoulders and spine. He kissed me, slower, making noises of satiation that echoed as a hum from my mouth into my ears. He was warm and pulsing and moving. He was flesh and blood. He was breathing. He was steadfast – he lived below me. He never left. He was here. He wouldn’t disappear. He couldn’t disappear.

I wanted to feel more of him. I hurriedly pulled off his T-shirt – his chest was hard, his skin the colour of almonds. It hugged round the surprisingly muscular curves and hollows of his shoulders and arms that were lean and coltish, at odds with the sallow weariness of his face. He dropped to his knees as he pulled down my tracksuit bottoms so they bunched at my bare feet, which looked laughably adolescent, and turned me around by my hips so I faced away from him. He took a mouthful of my thigh in between his teeth as I heard him clumsily unbutton his jeans. He held on to the counter as he stood up and pushed himself inside me. I leant forward – we were completely still and breathed slowly as my body got used to him. The steam rose from the sink and on to my face as I felt him move. My hands slipped and plunged into the water, splashing suds on to my bare skin. I felt his laughter reverberate through me, which made me laugh too. He leant down so his stomach pressed against my back and the thin silver chain he wore around his neck tickled my spine. He lifted my hair so it spilt over my face, the tips of its strands dipping in the water.

My hands, wearing soapsuds like lace gloves, reached behind and grabbed on to his forearms, like I was checking he was still there. I dug my fingers into him and let out a guttural noise of relief. I didn’t fragment and travel the room, every part of me remained in my body. I kept my eyes wide open, staring at glasses with red wine sediment and crusty forks that lurked beneath the water and knocked against each other. I felt him slow, stop and shudder. He gasped. We were still again. It had been brief and uncomplicated. Unplanned and ungainly. And real. Soapy, dirty, clattering, awkward. Real.

We sat opposite each other, half dressed on my kitchen floor, his back against the oven, my back against the cupboard under the sink.

‘I thought we hated each other,’ I said.

‘What?’ he said, his vowels stretched in outrage. ‘No!’

‘Why have you been so rude to me?’

‘It’s not you – fuck.’ He looked at the floor. ‘Do you have water?’

I nodded and stood up, aware I was now topless in tracksuit bottoms like a brickie on a warm day. I took a tumbler from the cupboard and put it under the tap while strategically using my arms to cover myself, suddenly selfconscious.

‘I struggle. This year,’ he said slowly, presenting chunks of thoughts to me like Scrabble tiles.

‘With what?’

‘Living.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, handing over the glass and joining him on the floor. I thought of his dressing gown. His vests. How he’d ignored me. How he’d seemed to ignore everything – rules, light, time, bin collection, manners, the world outside his flat. ‘Can I ask why?’

‘My girlfriend, she was living here.’

‘Is she the woman you were having the argument with?’

‘Yes,’ he said, nodding. ‘She cheat on me last year. I forgive her, she stay a while, but then she leave anyway.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.

He shrugged as he took a sip of water. ‘I try all this year to be better but now there is no …’ He put his glass down to avoid my gaze.

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘No purpose. No fun. No point.’

‘Same for you?’

‘Yeah, he disappeared. Stopped speaking to me.’

He nodded sympathetically, like we were strangers in the same community support group. Which I suppose we were. I thought of the three flats on top of each other, how they each housed a broken heart. Betrayal, disappearance, grief. Cuckolded in the basement, abandoned on the first floor, widowed on the top floor. ‘You know you will be fine again, Angelo,’ I said. ‘We were fine before and we’ll be fine again.’

He pushed the side of his hand methodically along the floor, like he was cleaning crumbs. The overhead kitchen lights illuminated the skin at the back of his head where his hair had become diaphanous.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking up at me with a repentant smile that seemed painful for him to hand over.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I took your packages. That’s a completely unacceptable thing to do. I didn’t realize you were in so much pain, I thought you were just horrible.’

‘It’s okay,’ he relented. He finished the glass of water in a gesture of finality. ‘I think perhaps it is not a good idea to …’ He motioned between us.

‘All right, all right,’ I said. ‘I don’t think we should do that again either.’

‘Why did you say you’re my wife?’

‘For no other reason than to steal from you, don’t worry.’

‘Ah.’

‘But I do think we should be friends,’ I said. ‘I think we deserve some peace.’

‘Sì, peace,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Peace. Piece of cake.’

‘Good idiom.’

‘Idiom?’

‘It’s when a phrase means something in a language, but it doesn’t have any literal meaning.’

‘I see.’

‘Teach me an Italian one.’

He leant his head back against the fridge and searched his thoughts. ‘Hai voluto la bicicletta, e mo’ pedala.’

‘What does that translate as?’

‘You wanted the bicycle, now pedal it.’

‘And what does that mean?’

‘It means, you must face the consequences of your desires.’

‘I see. We have “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.”’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You have your beds, we have our bikes.’