The Door Left Ajar
When Emily returned from the shops, the door to her flat was slightly open. Not wide—just not fully shut. The gap between the door and the frame seemed deliberately measured, as if someone had carefully chosen that exact position. As though they had stepped inside, glanced around, hesitated for a moment—then left, unwilling to stay. Or perhaps, despite all, they were still there.
She set the grocery bags down on the floor and froze. Her heart thudded softly but fast. No noise, no footsteps. Only silence and a faint draught that stirred the corner of the rug in the hallway. And something else—a fleeting trace of something unfamiliar, out of place in her home. Tobacco? Or just the scent of the street? She listened, but the air settled back into itself.
She had lived alone these past three years. After Thomas had gone—first to a rented flat, then to another city, then into someone else’s life. He had written to her twice. Once to ask for his jumper back, and again to tell her he was getting married. She hadn’t replied. Not out of anger. She simply didn’t know what to say when no one was really asking. And inside, everything had long since smoothed over—a quiet, faintly melancholic surface, like a frosted window: traces might linger, but you couldn’t tell whose they were.
Emily stepped inside slowly, scanning the corridor. Everything was in its place—the coat on its hook, the umbrella propped in the corner, the stack of letters on the shelf. No signs of disturbance, no rumpled doormat, no shoes pushed aside. Everything looked as it should, yet nothing felt quite right. She shut the door, turned the lock, and pressed the button for the alarm. The green light blinking steadied her, a little. Though if someone had wanted to, they’d have been long gone. Still, a residue remained—like an echo at her back.
In the kitchen, everything was as she’d left it that morning. The hob was off. A mug sat in the sink. A book lay open on the windowsill, midway through, with a crease at the corner of the page. She was certain she’d used a bookmark. But perhaps she’d misremembered. Or perhaps someone had read it. Or just flipped through. Yet the air felt different—subtly rearranged. As though someone had passed through the room unnoticed, leaving behind the faintest hollow. Not fear—just the imprint of another’s presence.
She returned to the hallway and only then noticed it—an old photograph on the side table. Not framed, just the print itself, slightly faded, one corner folded inward. Emily leaned closer. It was a picture she’d stored away years ago. Herself and Thomas. A decade back. He had his arms around her from behind, and she was laughing. One of their friends had taken it at a picnic. Back then, everything had felt solid, almost permanent. Now, it seemed cut from another time. And someone had placed it here, deliberately.
The photograph lay flat. It couldn’t have fallen on its own. Someone had taken it out. Looked at it. Put it there. Then left. Or had they? Emily glanced around, listening, as though his shadow still lingered in the walls. She hadn’t hidden the photo out of bitterness—she just couldn’t bear to see it. Now here it was, laid bare—a challenge, or a plea.
She sat on the sofa and picked up her phone. Scrolled through recent calls. Nothing. Messages—empty too. No word from him, or anyone else. Just delivery notifications and bank alerts. Dry, impersonal lines, without a single living word.
She rose and shut the balcony door—the wind had been drifting through the flat, rustling the curtains softly, as if caressing them. Evening eased into night. And then—the silence was split by the doorbell. One sharp ring. Precise. As though whoever had pressed it knew she would hear.
Emily approached. Peered through the peephole. No one. Just the empty stairwell, quiet save for the hum of the ceiling light. Only on the doormat—a blanket, rolled tight. Their old one. Navy, with white stripes. It looked almost new, though they’d taken it on trips, spread it on beaches, hung it out to dry at the cottage. She remembered its scent, its roughness. Remembered them both bundled beneath it in a tent. The last time they’d washed it together, bickering over detergent, then laughing at how silly the argument had been.
On the blanket lay a note. Just three words:
*”Sorry. Couldn’t stay.”*
The paper was folded unevenly, as if in haste. The handwriting—his. She knew it at once, by the sharp angles of the *p*s and the slant of the *t*s. As though he’d come after all, had made it this far, but couldn’t bring himself to ring again. Or perhaps he knew she’d understand without it.
She stood there. Stared at the door, the blanket, her own trembling hand. Fragments flickered through her mind—how he’d left, the sound of his key clinking against the metal bowl in the hall, the way she’d feared the silence afterward. Then she picked up the blanket, carried it inside, and carefully unrolled it. Inside lay a key. Her old one—the one he’d never returned. Plain, smooth, with a scratch at the base—she remembered that scratch, like a scar on something shared.
Emily turned off the alarm. Set the key back in the blanket. Sat for a few seconds, looking at it as if it were an emblem of something unfinished. Then she went to the door and, slowly, almost soundlessly, left it ajar once more.
Just in case. Or in case there was still a chance.
