One bedroom and a living room. Front door east, back door west, in a straight line.
The floor is old varnished board. There is a worn strip running from the front door straight to the back one, thirty centimetres wide, the varnish gone off it down to bare timber.
He lives alone. He does not walk that line — the sofa and the coffee table sit across it and he goes round.
One day he pushed the sofa onto the line, on top of it.
The next day the sofa was off the line, against the wall, and the worn strip ran out from underneath where it had been standing, the same width, the same polish.
He measured the strip: thirty centimetres.
He measured his shoulders: forty-four. He measured the width of his own footfall: seventeen.
Thirty is not the width one person wears. It is not double one person either.
It is two people walking abreast, shoulder to shoulder, each giving a little.
He asked the management company about the flat's history.
An elderly couple had it for twenty-six years. They died the year before last, eleven days apart.