The building has a lift and I did not take it.
I do not know why. 6 flights, with a case with a green ribbon on the handle and a wooden box in it, at 20 past midnight, in a stairwell that smelled of the same paint it has smelled of since May.
I stopped on the 4th floor landing and put the case down and stood there.
42 days.
Then I picked it up and did the last 2 flights, and I did not get my key out, because the door was already open.
She had left it on the latch and gone back inside, which is the most Emma thing that has ever happened to me.
I pushed it with my knuckles and there she was at the end of the hall.
Bare feet on the boards. My grey Palace training top, which is 4 sizes too big and which she has stolen since March and which came down to the middle of her thighs and nothing else that I could see anywhere in the world.
