I love Kafka and here we have a Kafkaesque sense of alienation – not to mention narrative experiments galore! Outwardly normal events slip into drama before they tip into horror. These oblique tales exert a fascinating hold over the reader.

Whenever I left the house, they lay on their jetty and when I came back, hours later, they were still lying there. In the sun, in the shade, in the wind and rain. Day in, day out, every day. There were two gardens of empty, rundown houses with a few trees and hedges between us. Reeds and driftwood were washed up along the shores. Their jetty was no different from the others. A fence of wooden planks protected them from the wind and their neighbours’ eyes. A pot of lobelias sat on a shelf attached to the planks. Behind it, a plastic palm tree waved above the water. This tree belonged to the little girl one jetty over. The girl couldn’t get enough of climbing up and jumping into the water, going under and resurfacing, screaming and going wild with excitement.

My neighbours seemed as indifferent to the child’s game as they were to all their surroundings. Nor did anyone appear to take any interest in them. No one ever paid them any attention.

They lay so peacefully on their deckchairs and for a time I assumed they must be happy. But after a while I began to wonder if they enjoyed their sedentary lives. And with each passing day I found it harder to bear the sight of their dogged indolence.

Through my binoculars, I saw that they were younger than I had reckoned from a distance. Now they appeared not exactly young, but prematurely aged, perhaps. I wondered why these people appeared so familiar. And I wondered why I wanted to approach them, even though I never did.