The Perfect Neighbor Has My Keys

How it begins

The flowers were on the wrong side of my bed.

That was how I knew he had been back.

I had put them by the window before leaving for physiotherapy. They were cheap supermarket tulips, still wrapped in paper because I could not grip the vase properly with my injured hand.

Now the paper was gone. The stems had been cut. The vase stood on my bedside table.

A note leaned against it.

MUCH BETTER HERE. YOU'RE WELCOME.

I stayed in the doorway.

There were perfectly reasonable explanations. I had given Peter the spare key after the fall. He had carried groceries, changed a lightbulb, and taken the rubbish downstairs when I could not manage it.

He had been kind.

I had used that word so often it had begun to sound like an obligation.

My phone chimed.

Peter: Did everything you asked.

I typed: I didn't ask you to move the flowers.

The reply arrived immediately.

Of course you did. Check your message.

Above his reply, in our conversation, was a sentence I had never written.

Please put the tulips by my bed while I'm out. Key is fine anytime.

I read it three times.

The spelling was mine. The missing apostrophe was mine too. I had never learned to trust the phone's tiny keyboard with my good hand.

I took a screenshot.

Then I rang Nadia in the flat above.

"Can you come down?" I asked.

"Now?"

"If you're free."

A pause. Then the sound of her putting something aside.

"Do you want me to knock or use the bell?"

The question nearly made me cry.

"The bell," I said. "And wait until I open the door."

After we hung up, I photographed the note beside the flowers.

The window caught the afternoon light. I wanted one thing in the room exactly where I had chosen it.

Then I put the vase back by the window.