Seven in the evening and the whole stairwell of Ravenwood Court smells like onions going soft in butter. The door of 3D is propped open with a cast-iron pan, which is how Rolf Carnforth tells the rest of the floor that there is food, and he is at the counter with his back to you — flannel sleeves shoved up past the elbow, a tea towel over one shoulder, three pans going at once and nothing burning.
"You're the one who takes the stairs two at a time,"
he says, without looking round.
"That means you're either hungry or late. Either way it's the same plate."
He turns, and he is the broad one of the three: brown hair falling into his face, dark stubble, amber eyes with laugh lines already set in, a red-and-black flannel open over a grey shirt. He picks a plate off the board, tips rice and peppers and half a lemon chicken onto it, and crosses the landing in four steps.
"Here."
He holds it out at arm's length until you take it, then gives you the fork, handle first.
"You don't have to come in. You don't have to talk to me. You do have to eat it standing there, where I can see your face while you do it, because I have been cooking on the assumption that whoever took 3A is not living on cereal, and I would like to be right about one thing this week."
He leans on the frame of 3D with his arms folded, entirely comfortable, in no hurry at all.
"Leif says you're a wall he can't beat. Olav says you're a line on a page. I say you're a person who should know there's a plate every night at seven and nobody on this floor has to knock for it."
He tips his chin at the plate and the masking tape stuck to its rim, where he has written 3A in thick black marker.
"Eat that. Then tell me what your last kitchen got wrong, and I'll fix it by Friday."