The tube

The bed in room seven stood a hand's width from the wall. Liv pushed it back because her pillow kept falling through the gap. Behind the headboard was a round brass grille, smaller than a beer mat. Cold air came through it, carrying the smell of damp coats.

The boarding house had eight rooms. Six were empty that week. A travelling salesman occupied one downstairs and had breakfast at half past six; Liv knew him only by the shoes outside his door. The owner, Els, left a bowl of mandarins on the reception desk each evening.

Liv had come to work. She was restoring a collection of old interviews, twelve tapes of fishermen disagreeing about a harbour that no longer existed. At home, her roof was being replaced. Els had promised quiet, except when the wind came from the west. Then a downpipe rattled. The wind had been westerly ever since Liv arrived.

At 00:17 Liv took off her headphones. Three taps came from the wall. Then a woman said, ‘Leave the light on a little longer.’

The voice was close, as if somebody were speaking directly against the wallpaper on the other side. Liv looked at the gap beneath her door. The landing was dark. She thought of the salesman, a phone on speaker, pipes carrying noise over surprising distances.

‘You've got the wrong room,’ she told the grille.

A short breath. Then nothing.

She pulled the bed forward again. A narrow slide in the grille was stuck beneath several coats of paint. When she pressed it, the metal creaked. Behind the holes there was no ventilation shaft, only a smooth pipe descending at a steep angle.

Liv recorded a minute on her phone. Rain, the hum of her laptop, nothing else. She draped a towel over the grille and went to sleep with the bedside lamp on, because the main switch was beside the door and she was already in bed.

By morning the towel had fallen to the floor. A narrow damp stripe ran through the fabric. That could have come from the cold pipe. She hung it over a chair and went downstairs carrying her phone. In the breakfast room Els was arranging six unused butter dishes in a row.