Apartment building

After moving to the apartment, she would see the other residents of the building as they waited for the unreliable lift or checked the post boxes in the lobby with its cracked marble tiles and crumbling plaster mouldings. Without knowing them, she guessed at their professions and personalities. Over time, she came to know most of them and a little about their lives. The doctor who left at odd times for shifts at the hospital was a taxi-driver and the grand, old Lady with the overpowering parfum ran the tiny flower shop next to the Metro station. She wondered whether everyone else had invented stories about the English girl who left the building every day after lunch, carrying an unwieldy, battered portfolio .