The Man Behind Her Door

Whoever the flowers were meant for, it wasn't her. Elena Calloway decided that somewhere between the lift doors opening on the fifth floor and the third step down the corridor, and she held on to the decision because it was the only one that made sense. Nobody sent Elena flowers. Her mother sent cards. Sophie sent memes. Her last boyfriend had once sent a thinking of you text that turned out to be meant for a group chat. But there they were. A bouquet of white lilies, laid on the mat outside Apartment 5B. Plain brown paper. Twine tied in a neat, deliberate bow. They weren't leaning against the door or dumped in a heap the way a courier might leave them. Someone had set them down carefully, stems angled toward the lift, as though they'd wanted them to be the first thing she saw. She stopped walking. Behind her, the lift shuddered and closed. The corridor light gave its usual faint hum. Somewhere below, a door slammed, and the sound travelled up the stairwell and died. Wrong door, she thought. She read the brass plate anyway. 5B. Hers. She glanced at Maya's flat across the hall. Dark. Maya was on nights this week, which meant she'd left an hour ago in her scrubs, swearing at her bus pass. Nobody else on the floor had reason to leave anything outside 5B. Elena shifted her bag higher on her shoulder and crouched. The lilies were wrapped so tightly she had to work two fingers under the paper to look for a card. Nothing. No florist's sticker, no printed name, no little envelope stapled to the ribbon. She turned the bouquet over and checked the underside like an i***t, as if a card might be hiding there out of shyness. Nothing. Just the smell. Heavy and sweet and cool, like clean sheets left to dry in an open window. She stood and looked down the corridor. Empty. Beige carpet, wall lights turned low, the stairwell door at the far end shut. Above it, the little black dome of the security camera, which she had walked past ten thousand times and never once actually looked at. She looked at it now. Its red light blinked, patient and unbothered. "Hello?" she said. It came out smaller than she meant it to. The corridor swallowed it. Nobody answered. Of course nobody answered. It was 7:40 on a Thursday evening in a respectable building in Westbridge, and the loudest thing on her floor was the fridge in 5C. Somebody made a mistake, Elena told herself. Somebody's going to knock in ten minutes, embarrassed and apologizing, and you'll hand them over and laugh about it. She should leave them where they were. She stood there for a full ten seconds, key already in her fist, and found she couldn't. Leaving them on the floor felt worse. Like walking past someone's dropped glove. Or someone's dropped something alive. She picked them up. They were heavier than they looked. Cold from the corridor, cool water seeping through the paper into her sleeve. She got the door open with her elbow, stepped inside, and, without quite deciding to, turned the lock behind her. Then the chain. She frowned at the chain. She never used the chain. --- The flat was exactly as she'd left it that morning. Coat hook. Shoes kicked into a heap. The window over the kitchen sink, still cracked open an inch, letting in the wet-pavement smell of London in late autumn. Ordinary. Warm. Hers. It was ridiculous to feel better for having the door locked. It was also true. She set the lilies on the kitchen counter, dropped her bag on a chair, and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. Her body had been running on coffee and spite since six. The article was due to Michael by nine tomorrow. Eighteen hundred words on independent bookshops closing across London, and she had eleven hundred, most of them bad. There was leftover pasta in the fridge she'd already decided wasn't going to happen. She had a plan for tonight. It was a very good plan. It involved toast and a laptop and no thoughts at all. It did not involve flowers. Her phone buzzed against the counter. Sophie. She answered on speaker. "I'm alive." "That's not what I asked." "You hadn't asked yet." "I was about to." A clatter on the line: keys, a door, Sophie muttering at a bus queue. "How was Michael?" "Michael was Michael. He used the word 'sharpen' four times." Elena pulled the paper off the lilies. Green stems, wet and slippery, and more of them than she'd thought. Twelve at least. "Soph. Weird question. Did you send me flowers?" The clatter stopped. "...No," Sophie said slowly. "Should I have? Is it your birthday? Have I forgotten your birthday? It's not until March." "Someone left a bouquet outside my door." "Who?" "That's what I'm asking." "Was there a card?" "No." "A name on the wrapping?" "No." "A delivery slip? A number to call? Literally anything?" "Sophie." "I'm just saying. Someone sent them." "Or someone got the wrong flat," Elena said. "It'll be a mistake. They'll come back for them." "Mm-hm." Sophie's voice had changed. She'd gone bright and interested, the way she did when a friend's relationship was on fire. "What kind?" "Lilies. White ones." "Funeral or wedding?" "Sophie." "It's a valid question. Lilies are one or the other. What did the shop say?" "There's no shop." "You've got a secret admirer." She said it with such joy that Elena laughed out loud despite herself. "You do. Somebody's been watching you eat your sad desk salad and thinking, that woman deserves lilies." "That is not romantic. That is a health concern." "I'm serious!" "You're insane." But she was smiling, and she noticed she was smiling, and that felt strange too, because under the smile, low in her stomach, there was something else. Something quiet and slightly cold, the way the lilies had been when she picked them up. Someone had known which door. Someone had known she'd be out, and when she'd be back, and set them down in the exact spot she'd see them first. She looked at the counter. The paper lay in a brown curl. The twine, cut clean. Twelve white lilies dripping quietly onto her worktop, and not a single scrap to say who they were from. "Send me a photo," Sophie said. "No." "Why not?" "Because you'll make it a thing." "It is a thing!" "It's a mistake, and it's a bunch of flowers, and I have eleven hundred bad words to fix." Elena picked up the paper and balled it in her fist. "I'm going to put them in water, I'm going to eat toast, and I'm going to go to bed. I love you. Go home." "I love you too. And I want a photo." "Goodnight." "Text me when you've eaten something that isn't toast!" The line went dead. The flat went quiet again, only the fridge and the tap and, somewhere in the walls, the low knock of Bellrose House's ancient pipes. Elena breathed out. A mistake, she thought again, more firmly, and went looking for a vase. --- She had two. One was chipped. The other was tall and green and had been a gift from her mother, and Elena had never once filled it, because she never bought herself flowers. She filled it now. The stems slid in with a soft, wet sound. She trimmed the ends at an angle, the way her mother always did, and arranged the lilies until they stopped leaning to one side. Twelve pale blooms, wide open, their centres streaked with faint gold. She set the vase on the little table by the window and stepped back. They looked good. That was the unfair part. They looked really good, like a bouquet somebody had spent time on, standing in a shop with their head tilted, choosing stems one at a time. Very particular, she thought, and didn't know why. The scent had already spread through the flat. Clean, cool, faintly sweet. It had a way of getting under her ribs. It reminded her of something. Not her grandmother's garden. Not weddings, or funerals, or anything Sophie had joked about. Something else. She frowned, one hand still resting on the back of the chair, and let the memory come or not come. Nothing. A dark window. A smell. The sensation of standing very still while something big and quiet moved past her. She shook it off. And then, because she was tired and her guard was down, another thought arrived that she hadn't been ready for. She had said it once. Out loud, to someone. White lilies are my favourite. It had been a small thing, a passing thing, the kind of sentence you drop into a conversation and forget. She could hear herself saying it. She could almost see the face of the person who'd listened. Sophie, probably. Or her mum. Elena scrolled through every name she knew. Sophie. Her mum. Her brother. Ethan. A few people at work. Not one of them fit. Not one of them felt like the person who'd heard her say it. She stood in her kitchen with the lights on and the chain across the door, staring at twelve white flowers that shouldn't have been there, and understood the cold thing under her ribs at last. Whoever had left them at her door knew what she liked. And she couldn't remember ever telling them.