It was a rented room in a sixties block, one beam running across the ceiling directly over the bed. The landlord raised it himself at the viewing: this one is hard to let, and that beam is why.
He took it. Eight hundred and twenty a month.
Around four in the afternoon the beam's shadow fell across the bed — a band, dark, about as wide as the beam. He tore off a strip of surgical tape and stuck it at the shadow's edge, to mark it. No particular reason.
The next day at four the shadow was outside the tape, two centimetres nearer the pillow.
He put down another strip.
After that he did it daily. On overcast days too — no sun, and the shadow was still there and still moved. With the ceiling light on at night it lay in the same place.
Forty-one days, and the edge of it reached the pillow.
That night he slept on the sofa. In the morning there was a deep depression in the middle of the pillow with the buckwheat husks pushed out to either side.
He peeled up all forty-one strips and laid them out on the floor in order.
The spacing was not even. There was a stretch in the middle where they were bunched close together, with wider gaps before and after.
He counted the bunched ones: seven.
He had been away for those seven days. He had gone home for a funeral. The room was locked and the key was in his pocket.