Anyone home?

I knock on Leon's front door and wait. No reply.

I knock again. Harder. And wait. I peek through the speckled glass set into his front door but can only make out a few indistinct shadows and muted colours.

I side-step over to the bay window, but the curtains are drawn. I lean over the small shrubbery sprouting from the flower bed edging the garden and rap my knuckles on the glass. I call out Leon’s name.

Nothing.

I walk the concrete driveway beside the house and round the back to the kitchen window. I cup my hands over the glass and peer in. The setting sun behind me paints the kitchen golden. But nothing looks unusual.

I pace back around to the front again and fish my phone out of my pocket. I thumb down to ‘LEON : HOME’ and jab the call button. After a few seconds to connect, it starts to ring. Through the window I can hear the sympathetic real-world echo. It rings and rings and rings. Nobody answers.

There’s nobody home.

An old woman in a pale green and pink tracksuit walks past on the other side of the road. We make eye contact. She looks at me, judges me. Apparently I don’t look like a thief because she smiles at me as she goes.

“Evening,” I call to her. She raises a hand in salute.

I wait ‘til she’s gone from sight before I hop up the step to the front door. The Yale lock remembers me and opens easily.

The house tastes stale. The air is too still, too cold. But at least there’s nothing terrible lingering, for which I’m extremely grateful.

The living room looks as I remember it. The bookcase is still tipped over from before. An empty beer can is still on the floor next to armchair, where I dropped it. The empty waste basket is still next to the couch, where I put it. But no Leon.

I poke my head into the kitchen. Nothing.

I trot upstairs and open the door to the bathroom. Nothing.

I try the next door. A small beige room with a desk and computer, a few art prints on the walls, papers piled neatly - Leon’s home office. Nothing.

The last door is Leon’s bedroom. Dominated by a brushed-steel four-poster bed, a treadmill in the corner, and a fitted wardrobe down one wall with mirrors mounted on the sliding doors. Clothes sprawl across the floor and drape lazily over the bed frame. Nothing.

I return to the living room, unsure what to do, what to try next.

I sit down on the couch and feel a chill run through me, a shiver that starts at the base of my spine and trickles up to the lizard part of my brain. Suddenly I don't feel welcome in this house and I rise quickly, trying to beat down the surge of panic, the twisting in my gut, the unshakable feeling of being watched by a hunter's eyes.

I search for a blank piece of paper, eventually having to fetch one from his office upstairs, and hastily scrawl a message for Leon:

"LEON, WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?"

I sign it simply 'RP' and tape it to the wall by the front door - somewhere he'll definitely see it when he comes back, if he comes back.

Outside, the sun has set and the sky is greying quickly. A chill wind has picked up, swirling dust around the house. I turn up my collar against it and pull the front door closed behind me as I leave.

For a moment I think I hear that name again, but it must be the wind, can only be the wind, and so I ignore it...