The Phone on the Landing at 14 Corry Vale

When we moved into 14 Corry Vale there was a phone on the landing windowsill. Not a mobile, a proper corded phone, cream-coloured, the kind with the coiled cable gone slack from age. Nobody plugs those in anymore. It faced the wall instead of out into the hall. My partner Dev said it was probably left by the bloke before us, some contractor who'd done six months here between jobs. I said fine. We left it there because moving it felt like more effort than it was worth, and that's the whole reason, really. No feeling about it. Just the two of us being tired from carrying boxes up three flights and not wanting to touch one more thing that wasn't ours.

First week, nothing. Second week, on the Tuesday, it rang at 11:40pm. One long trill, then it stopped before I even got up. The cable wasn't in the wall socket. I checked, on my hands and knees behind the little table, feeling stupid. Dev laughed from the bedroom and said houses settle, pipes knock, whatever, and we went back to bed. I remember thinking the ring sounded slightly warbly, like it was coming from somewhere further off than the landing, the way a radio sounds when you're not quite tuned to the station.

Third week it rang again. Same night, Tuesday, 11:40 — I checked the clock on my phone this time, so I know I'm not misremembering it as some other hour to make it feel neater. It kept going. I got up. Dev stayed in bed and said, in that flat voice he uses when he actually means please, don't. I picked it up anyway.

No dial tone. Just breathing, slow, the kind you do when you're trying not to let someone hear that you've been crying. Then a man's voice, very calm, said my name. Not Dev's. Mine, in full, both names, the way my dad used to say it when I was in trouble as a kid. I hadn't told anyone in this building my middle name. I'm fairly sure of that. I told the landlord my first name and my surname when I signed, and that was it.

I put the phone down without answering. Not slammed it, just set it back in its cradle the way you'd put down someone else's baby. Downstairs a dog started barking, the one that belongs to the woman in the ground floor flat, and I stood there listening to it until it stopped, glad of something ordinary to focus on.

Dev didn't ask what was said. He asked if I was cold, because I was standing on the landing in a T-shirt in November, and he got up and put a jumper round my shoulders and steered me back to bed like I was the one who needed managing. I let him. We didn't talk about it in the morning, or the Tuesday after, when it didn't ring at all, or the one after that, when it did.

It's been four months now. Dev sleeps through it these days, or says he does. I've started staying up on Tuesdays, sitting on the top stair with my knees against my chest, waiting for 11:40 so I can answer it before the second ring, before he wakes and tells me not to. Whoever's on the other end always knows my full name. I still don't know his. I've never asked. I think if I ask, it'll tell me, and I think then I'll have to keep the phone plugged into something more than a socket that isn't even wired to the wall.

Last Tuesday I picked it up on the first ring and said, before he could, go on then, say it. There was a pause, longer than usual, like he was deciding whether I meant it. Then the breathing again, closer to the receiver than before.

"Exit Frame: Red Stairwell and Warm Gallery Lighting at The Phillips Collection" by dalecruse is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.