My girlfriend, Aisha, called me from Heathrow Airport, Terminal 4. 

The first thing she said: “You’re the only person who can help.” She was tearful, but stern. “Pappy’s in Ealing General. He collapsed in front of a car, or the car clipped him and then he collapsed. The nurse wasn’t speaking clearly and neither was Pappy. They called me from his bedside, but I’m already on the plane. We’re about to take off.” 

Beyond her, I could hear a final call for boarding, echoing through a departure lounge. 

“I’ll go to the hospital now,” I said. 

I was in bed, 3.15pm, watching a video of a man from Somerset build a shelter out of nothing but natural clay. He splashes water on the ground, then moulds it into a tunnel, same shape as a pig sty, then he lights a fire using fallen branches he’s collected from public woodland. In the description at the bottom of the video, he insists the land he’s building on is his own. The fire bakes the clay into something rigid, then he puts the fire out, moulds some more, lights another fire. Time-lapse footage shows his shelter growing like a glistening insect queen. He scrabbles around it like a worker bee, covered in mud, occasionally beaming at the camera. I closed my laptop. 

“Don’t,” said Aisha. “Don’t go to the hospital. Pappy’s stable. They say he’ll be ready to come home in a few days. Go to his house. I need you to clear a load of stuff out for me, for him, because he won’t do it himself. Now’s our chance—” 

I started to say something but she told me to ‘ssshhh’, as if her head was about to go underwater and she only had so much time. 

“When he gets out of hospital, I want to have a clean house waiting for him. We can get rid of so much. It will be so good for him.”

“Will he want that?” I said.

“He’s my father,” said Aisha. “Please just help me. You always make things more complicated than they are. Listen.”

I had never met Pappy. I’m not sure he knew I existed. I didn’t know his real name. I knew he was born in Kuala Lumpur, moved to London when he was nineteen. Aisha said he went straight to graduate school, no college degree, he was just too good at maths. You could do that in those days, she said. Twenty-one, he was on his way to a PhD, professorship before twenty-six, youngest in the department’s history. People once travelled from across the world to ask him about numbers, about how numbers behaved. What else? An acrimonious divorce. Addicted to Malaysian TV news. In the evenings, he drank red wine and played strategy games on a PC he’d built himself from parts he’d found at boot sales. It was faster than ninety-five per cent of PCs built for the consumer market, Aisha said, but she also said she knew nothing about computers. She had to take Pappy’s word for it. She said he once had plenty of money, but he’d given most of it to a friend in Penang for safe keeping, because Pappy didn’t trust the British banks, and then his friend died prematurely and Pappy couldn’t get access to the account his money was in. Lost forever. What else did he own? He’s a hoarder, Aisha always said. Throws nothing away. Rowing machines and motherboards and instruction manuals for appliances bought in 1978. Plug-in kettles, rice cookers, portable neck fans and electric grills and tape decks. He keeps every magazine he’s ever read. He has a silver Ford Focus with nineties plates, parked in the drive with grass growing up past the hub caps. He gets in the car every week, starts it to warm the engine, just to keep it alive. He won’t even put it in gear. 

    youl be shocked, Aisha texted me from the air. the house is filthy and stinks im so sorry thank you for doing this for me thank you. send me photos ill tell you what u can throw out. dont worry

Pappy had a spare key in a lock box. The lock box had its own key, which was under a flower pot next to the guttering at the corner of the house. The flower pot was partially broken and if you looked at it from a certain angle you could see the key under it without even lifting the pot. 

The smell as I walked in the door: damp, green, a bit like melons, but not rancid. The carpet on the stairs was scuffed and grey, pinned down in places with office staples, and the front hall was matted with newspapers and flyers, but these looked recent. There were no boxes stacked to the ceiling. No rat droppings. I didn’t gag. The lounge had three televisions, only one plugged in, and two dining tables, and two sofas, each could seat four at a pinch, and there were chairs facing in different directions, with different designs — an ergonomic with adjustable lumbar support; two that looked like the chairs you get in primary schools; a plush but ancient recliner I worried would dissolve on contact. I sent photos.

Pappy has no friends and no visitors, replied Aisha. keep one sofa one chair, youl need to get a van for the rest or maybe charity shop take them? hows the smell???     

I replied saying it wasn’t too bad. I said I felt terrible getting rid of all his furniture. I didn’t receive a response for a few hours and when I did it just said, more photos pls, we need to move fast

I photographed all the main rooms. A leak somewhere in the roof had been making its way gradually through the house — top to bottom, years of slow seep marked by a pillar of black mould that descended from the attic, through the shower in the upstairs en-suite, through the bathroom floor and the ceiling of the office below, down the wall of the office to a patch of exposed floorboards at ground level, and possibly beyond — and apart from that just clutter, clutter and dust. Were there horrors? In the kitchen cupboards, jars of chili sauce and fermented bean paste and tinned sweetcorn and carrots and peas and Marmite that had expired more than ten years ago, but they were all sealed. Pappy had purchased five 10kg sacks of jasmine rice and they were stacked by the backdoor to the patio, and on top of them Pappy put his dried pots and pans and a couple of notebooks filled with recipes written in blue biro. Most of the handwriting I couldn’t read.

I was bin-bagging the milk in the fridge and got a call from a number I didn’t recognise. 

“Who are you?” shouted the voice on the phone.      

I told them who I was. 

“You are in my house. Get out of my house,” Pappy said. “Intruder.”

“I’m not an intruder,” I said. “I’m here to help. I’m a friend of Aisha.”

“My daughter, she doesn’t love you,” said Pappy. 

I wanted to say he couldn’t possibly know this, but instead I said, “We’ll have to agree to disagree.”

“I don’t know you. I don’t want you. They are my things. So many.”

“Please understand, sir,” I said, “I’m in a tough position. Aisha asked me—” 

“My daughter is my daughter,” said Pappy. I couldn’t argue with this. “Maybe I will call the police.” 

The phone sounded like it was being rubbed against aluminium foil, and then a woman’s voice, Irish. 

“Mag Drayford, nurse practitioner,” she said. “Mr Pakbang is in pain. It’s making him say things he doesn’t mean.”

“I’m trying to get his house ready for him, for his return. I don’t want to upset him.”

“We’re planning to discharge him tomorrow,” she said. “Nobody’s calling the police.” 

In the background, I could hear a man shouting. 

Have you landed? I texted Aisha. 

yes, she replied, and she sent me a photo of a menu in a Chinese restaurant. The prices were eye-watering. In the background, there were skyscrapers. They were blurry, but I could see them. auntie arriving soon, shes treating me to dinner, how u getting on? i gave Pappy ur number so he could discuss throwing things out

I said her father was struggling to relinquish his attachment to the material plane. 

this isnt funny, she replied. my dad is sick be serious. this is very hard for me. u need to help

I took more photos of things he didn’t want to get rid of — boxes of Aisha’s old exam papers and school books and swimming certificates; boxes of Aisha’s sister’s school books; bedding for both girls, Toy Story duvet covers and pillow cases decorated with cartoon galaxies; a first-generation Macintosh computer; textbooks on the Java programming language; a road map of the UK published in 1994; twelve unopened boxes of wine, red and white, from all over Europe; a piano which sounded OK except for the F# below middle C which didn’t play any note at all, it just clacked. On a corkboard in his study, I found a handwritten to-do list from twenty years ago, dated, untouched. There was rust on the tiny steel pin that held it in place. The list included ‘PICK A + D FROM SCHOOL AT 1520’, all in capitals, and beneath that, no capitals — ‘trim hedge’, ‘buy or find 50m teleph. wire’, ‘parabola / euclidean distance’, ‘check spark plug’, ‘ice cream and soup for girls’ — and at the very bottom a number for a landline, no name. I didn’t recognise the area code. I imagined dialling it, then didn’t. 

I sent a photo of the to-do list to Aisha along with a smiley face emoji, the one with red cheeks that shows you think something’s cute, as well as a shot of all the filing boxes her father had shelved at the end of the room with the least mould, everything labelled in black Sharpie —insurance documents, bank statements printed and ordered by month, a box that just said ‘TAX / DIVORCE’, another that said ‘Kings College’. Aisha texted, why u bothering with those? ur wasting time just get rid of the big stuff and other crap. make sure u check garden too and shed pls. hyrry

Fox shit on the patio near the kitchen door, a watering hose unspooled and patched, in places, with gaffa tape, but the garden was generally neater than the house. The lawn had been clipped not too long ago. A scab of concrete had been sunk in the centre of the grass, a hole drilled to hold a washing line, and on the line hung a single brown dress shirt and a faded pair of boxer shorts, clean, but wet from the rain. The shed by the back fence was padlocked, but the padlock was open, you just had to tug it. The shed was surprisingly large. You could fit a family in there if you had to. Instead, it contained three lawnmowers, sacks of unmixed concrete, more computers, boxed and unboxed, and a plastic tub filled with spare electronics — a chaos of HDMI cables, dial-up modems, insulated scotch tape, a soldering iron. Folded in one corner was what looked like a camp bed and a sun mattress, the type you can lay on the beach. It was getting late and I had to use the light on my phone to see things. 

Aisha called me after I assumed she’d gone to bed. It sounded like there were other people in the room where she was, glasses and plates and forks being knocked together, being cleared away, or were people still eating? Did I care? I kept yawning. 

“I’m going home,” I said. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“No,” she said. “Sleep in Pappy’s lounge, or upstairs. If you go home now you’ll waste time in the morning. Have you rented a van yet? I can send you the money.” 

I told her I still hadn’t decided what to throw out.

“You’re making this really hard for me,” she said. “I want to be there, but I can’t, so you have to be there for me. And you’re not there for me. You’re there being you and you’re making things complicated when they’re actually really fucking simple. Listen. This should be easy.” 

I apologised.

“Stop apologising,” she said. “This isn’t a time for you to be sorry. You don’t get to be sorry right now.” 

I was asleep on one of Pappy’s sofas when he called me again. Three in the morning. 

“Where are you?” he said. I said I was at home, in bed. “What have you thrown away?” 

“I haven’t thrown anything away, Mr Pakbang, I’m just making things neat. Cleaning.”

“My name is Joey,” he said. “Pakbang means eldest brother. You don’t call me pakbang.”

“Sorry,” I said. 

“I’m not coming home tomorrow. The doctor says I have stomach problems. They say it’s OK but I will be here longer. Tests. I want to come home, but they won’t let me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Listen to me close,” he said. “I want you to promise you will not throw away things. You can clean. I will thank you for cleaning. But you must promise me, nothing will be thrown away. Not until I am home. Then maybe we will talk.” 

“I don’t know if I can promise that,” I said.

“When I die, it won’t matter,” he said. “Then everything can be the end. You can throw everything in a river. You can throw me in a river. But don’t kill me now. You are killing me.”

“I’m not killing you, Mr Pakbang,” I said, panicking. “I don’t want to kill you.”

“Promise me,” he said. “Intruder. My home. Promise me. I’m in so much pain.”

I can’t remember exactly how I responded, but he hung up, softly. He said, “Good night,” before putting down the phone. When all was quiet, I noticed there were small, glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling of his living room. I had stars like that in my bedroom when I was a child. What were they doing here? 

send me photos of the rooms once u have cleared, Aisha texted me. then u can clean. thank you. ur the best. x 

I dragged a sofa, four chairs, two televisions, a dozen boxes of clothes and textbooks and Ordnance Survey maps, ironing boards and step-ladders, piles of old linen, every bottle of wine I could find, the spare monitors and children’s toys and board games, plastic shopping bags of things I couldn’t identify but gathered up anyway, anything I could lift, through the garden, through the rain, into the shed. I made everything fit. I turned things upside down, broke things, slotted them together like Tetris bricks. I leaned so much against the walls that the woodwork started to bulge outwards. I was soaked through but I felt good. My heart-rate was up. I was healthy. It felt healthy to be outside carrying heavy things in the rain after sleeping indoors with all that black mould. I didn’t care about these things. I could breathe. By the time I was finished a single muddy trench bisected the lawn. From the upstairs bedroom window it looked like a landing strip. I found an old brush and a mop and bucket and some spray that smelled of lavender and lemons, and I swept and wiped and mopped and sprayed my way from kitchen to attic. I took photos from angles that made every room look empty and clean. Aisha texted back saying where you put the stuff? and I didn’t respond. She texted again asking the same question and I said Don’t worry. I’ve disposed of it. Relax. but I regretted the last bit, because she texted again saying I cant fucking relax my dad is dying and I said I’m sorry. It’s sorted though. Don’t worry. and she said thank u cant thank u enough xx      

I decided to call Mr Pakbang myself that night. His breathing sounded like a shell when you put it to your ear, a soft and constant roar, and I thought I could hear a heart monitor twinkling in the background, but perhaps I just expected to hear those things.

“You have thrown away my house?” he asked.

“No, Pakbang, sir. Joey. No. I wanted to tell you I haven’t thrown anything away.”

“Where are my things?”

“They’re safe. Trust me.”

“You have moved them?”

“They’re very safe.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Please trust me.”

“Anywhere but the shed. The shed is leaking.” 

“Trust me,” I said.

“OK.”

“Don’t tell Aisha, please. She wanted stuff thrown out so the house could be cleared for you. It’s good for you. That’s what she says.”

“Maybe,” he said. 

There was a pause.

“It’s just stomach problems,” he said. “I’ll be home soon.”

“Yes,” I said. 

Another pause. This time I know I heard beeping. 

“I understand you used to be—” I began, but at the same time he said, “I’m very tired. It is unquestionably late. You have gone back to your house?” 

“Yes,” I lied. 

He grunted something, then nothing. Hung up. I said goodnight anyway. I turned my phone to vibrate. The rain outside had stopped but there was a tree hanging over the shed, and water continued to drip from the tree to the roof, so it sounded like it was still raining. I’d found a small torch in the old man’s bedroom and had brought it with me. I unfolded the camp-bed that was propped against the wall and I rolled out the beach mattress and checked it for spiders and bugs. A centipede slipped from one of the folds, flickered across the floor. I enjoyed watching it. I ripped open the nearest box with my fingers and pulled from it a bottle, a Riesling, from the Mosel, 1996, notes of lime and pear, the label said. Delicate, vibrant. I drank from the neck, closed my eyes, opened them. I could hear dripping, but couldn’t see it. I wished that the old man had stuck plastic, phosphorescent stars on the ceiling of his shed. I considered playing music, but no headphones. I turned off the torch. Sleep, I thought. My phone brought me back, a vibration, a bright blue screen in the dark, a text from Aisha. 

where are u? it said.

I waited.

??? was the message that followed.

It’s done, I replied.

that wasn’t the question where are u now?     

Home, I said. Tired.

I closed my eyes at just the right moment. A drop of water landed on my eyelid. I blinked it away.

ur lying, she wrote. u would have said home the first time if u were there. if everything is done then where are u?     

I heard another drop, but didn’t feel it, somewhere near. 

are u at Pappy’s? if everything is done why are you still at Pappy’s? there’s no reason for you to be there unless you not telling the truth     

This time something landed on the roof. It wasn’t water. 

what are you doing at my dad’s house he doesn’t even want u there. get out     

I waited. Whatever it was, I waited.