There seem, by the day, to be more and more women in the house; I do not know how they got in, whether they grew here like plants, or gravitated from the skies like dust. Sometimes, late at night, I hear a rustle or the sound of footsteps, and imagine that the front door has been left ajar, and - even now - regimental columns of them are flowing silently across the threshold, pale and gauze-like, their skirts brushing away their feet.

And I do not know what’s to be done with them, or, indeed, if anything can be done. All I know is, day by day, more and more women seem to enter the house, so that I wonder how it can possibly contain them all. At first it was simple: there were five rooms, five women, five name-plaques on the doors. But then the duvets stowed in the airing cupboard began to disappear, and there were morning strangers rubbing their eyes on the landing. Once I crept out to the toilet in the small hours and, glancing down, could see nothing but their criss-crossed bodies in the hallway, faintly illuminated by the impartial, almost comforting greenness of their sleep-ridden faces. Returning to my room, I found one of them had taken advantage of my absence, and was wandering confusedly about the room. I tried to grab her by the scruff of her neck, but she easily evaded me. Then she passed out onto the landing again with a neutral sigh, as if I were a minor perturbation within her slumber, but one to which she could not awaken sufficiently to understand.

After that I locked my door each time I took a shower or went to the bathroom. But it became harder and harder to find a slot when either was free. All through the night women were showering and taking baths, and no sooner was the bathroom bolt undrawn than there was a furtive click from one of the bedrooms, followed by a giggle and the patter of feet. Once I vowed to get the better of them, and, noticing that there was a lull between 3am and 4am, I forced myself to get up at 3:45 and lock myself in the bathroom. In response, one after another they came out to rattle the door, as if this were the only way they felt comfortable addressing me. Then they slowly returned to their rooms, perturbed and perhaps slightly insulted, since I had done something they hadn't calculated, and therefore which must be - in some obscure way - unfair to them. The following day the first of them tried to shower at 3:40, but I had anticipated this, and was already in the bathroom by 3:30. Again, they mutely rattled at the door; I ignored the plea. The day after that they started to shower at 3:00, but I had made my point, and that day I chose to go into work late and wait till 11am, when all of them had finished showering, dressing, breakfasting, reading the papers, and everything else they did. One after another they banged the front door, and finally the house was silent.

I do not know whom I am ruled by, and sometimes I even think that I am free. Sometimes, again, I dream of that freedom, only conscious of my lack because of the blueness that continues to escape me; and, at those times, I see just the shell of a house, with its shattered beams and the corners of mouldy carpets gnawed by rats. Understanding nothing, I find myself thinking of estuaries and harbours, of quaysides and docks where different worlds begin and end, and the salty blur of their lives struggles against mine like white sails before the wind. I think of an embrace whose darkness conceals the world, and in which I am simultaneously lost and found. If the rats consume the women, or the women consume the rats, it’s the same to me, and if a leaking gutter blots out the carpets or turns the floors to mud, I don’t know if I shall feel sad or happy. All I know is that I know nothing, and that this is why the women are here - not to make sense of this absence, but to fill the space of it. They grow in the places the world leaves open to them; their purpose, since it has never been questioned, successfully eludes any obligation to become defined.