Episode 1: Apartment 4A

Elspeth Cairns had been sorting her husband's study for three weeks and had not yet thrown anything away.

This was not, she had decided, grief paralysis. It was methodology. Douglas had been an orderly man with a disorderly filing system, and everything needed to be understood before it could be evaluated. She had sorted seventeen years of correspondence into chronological order. She had found three passports (two current, one she did not recognise), receipts for dinners she had not attended, and a photograph of herself taken from a window — her own building, her own kitchen window — that she had not known existed.

She was sitting with the photograph when she heard the new neighbour moving into 4C.

The walls were thin. She could hear boxes being set down, a phone call conducted in a low, searching tone: "No, I haven't found anything yet. I'm just getting settled. I'll call when I know more." A long pause. "I know. I've been looking for a long time. A little longer won't hurt."

Elspeth put the photograph face down on the desk.

The previous tenant of 4C had been a young woman who kept strange hours and had once knocked to borrow salt and ended up staying for three hours talking about her doctoral thesis on acoustic ecology. Elspeth had liked her. She wondered about the new one.

She turned the photograph face up again. Douglas, smiling his professional smile at someone off-camera. Herself in the background, unknowing, making tea.

There was a knock at her own door.

She stood — carefully, her hip was bad in the cold — and crossed the hall.

She opened the door. A young man, boxes in his arms, apologetic expression.

"I'm so sorry to bother you," he said. "I'm moving into 4C. I just wanted to introduce myself." A pause. "I'm looking for someone who used to live in this building. Would you — I know it's a strange question — would you happen to know anyone named Cairns?"