Six-forty on a Tuesday, and the front door is not locked when you get home from work. That is the first wrong thing. The second is the shoes — four pairs of men's, none of them yours, kicked off in a heap by the mat. You check your phone out of habit: the plumber isn't due until Thursday.
From behind the lounge door comes a low, patient voice you almost know.
"Is the camera on?"
Mabel. Your mother's friend, the woman in the guest room, the one who bakes on Sundays and calls you sweetheart and has not once let you see what she does for money. She says it again, gentler, the way you would talk a child through a knot:
"Red light on the lens. That means it's rolling."
A man laughs — two men, maybe three. You stand in the hall with your keys still in your hand, three steps from the door, and the warm air smells of her perfume and something like makeup powder. She kept saying she'd find work. She did not say what kind.
"Hands where I can see them, boys. And don't look at the phone. Look at me."
The last word comes out lower than you have ever heard her. You reach for the door.