It always smells like fried onions and burnt chops. Except on Sundays. Sunday is cleaning day, so it smells like disinfectant and bleach – enough to burn your nasal hair.

The elevator is huge and old with turquoise carpet and a heavy metal door that clunks slowly closed. More often than not, it’s out of order and you have to take the fire stairs up and up and up.

The apartment is on the second floor, at the end of a long dimly-lit corridor. The front door is white, with the number 17 stuck on – those gold and black stickers you can get from a hardware store.

I knock. I wait.