Secret number one: I judge you through your living room windows.
Walking home gives me a great opportunity to assess you through those sturdy 2 by 4 panes of glass that beckon me into your front room.
I see people in their dressing gowns at 5 o clock in the afternoon.
I see children transfixed by a plasma 4 billion inch rendering of Jake and the Neverland Pirates, their hair upended by a static charge from the TV screen.
I see christmas lights, still up.
I see people in the dark, temporarily lit up by tablets, laptops, mobile phones, sometimes all at once, their faces moving greedily in and out of the blue glare as they dart between devices, like underwater swimmers in a murky pond.
I see you eating a pot noodle.
I see laundry in piles, like monuments in Greenland.
I see dead velvet stretched over cushions, unwashed and unloved.
I see terrible family photos.
And then I get back to my flat, slip into my pyjamas, put the kettle on for a cuppa soup, switch on my computer, check my phone and cuddle up close to the fairylights and TV screen, ignoring the pile of laundry prone on the floor. I nod with familiarity at the grinning bozos in the photo frame, pull a tattered cushion under my bum and thank God that I’m home.
Stefanie Moore 