Nor had there been an unopened carton of milk in the fridge door and a fresh baguette on the kitchen table. Someone had been in the flat while he was away. Perplexed, Edward went from room to room, searching for further signs of the mystery visitor. Nothing seemed to have been taken; it definitely wasn’t some sort of bizarre burglary. Had someone illicitly been staying here, a very transient squatter? Or had the Iskarovs sneakily put someone up while he was gone? He came to his bedroom. Had whoever it was been through his things? Nothing looked as though it had been touched, although it was true he did not have much here to go through. Had they slept in his bed? It all seemed pristine, but now the mystery presence filled the whole flat. He went back to the living-room and imagined who on earth might have been sitting in Volodya’s chair, listening to the inordinately loud ticking of Volodya’s clock, which he had forgotten was quite so ludicrously loud. It was only when the spooky nervous prickling had spread all over him that he went into the kitchen again to take another look at the only clues, noticed more gifts of food distributed around the room and realised that, of course, it could only have been Irina.
