I discovered my vibrator was dead at the worst possible moment.

There was probably no good time to discover such a thing, but this felt particularly cruel. I had spent the better part of half an hour preparing for an evening of shameless self-indulgence. The bathwater was exactly the right temperature, the overhead light had been replaced by the soft glow of three vanilla-scented candles, and a glass of chilled rosé waited within reach on the windowsill. My phone sat on top of the laundry basket, playing a relaxation playlist that seemed to consist mostly of rain, mournful piano music and whales calling plaintively across the ocean.

I had bubbles. I had privacy. I had finally convinced the cat that a closed bathroom door did not constitute abandonment.

Most importantly, I had nowhere else to be until tomorrow morning.

After three weeks of overtime, two catastrophically bad dates and an embarrassingly vivid dream involving the man who delivered my groceries, I had decided I deserved an orgasm.

Possibly several.

Instead, the little pink vibrator in my hand gave one weak, stuttering buzz before falling silent.

I stared at it. “No.”

I pressed the button again, then held it down. Nothing happened. I shook the vibrator hard enough to splash water over the side of the bath, rubbed the button with my thumb and even held it to my ear in case it was vibrating so faintly I had somehow failed to notice.

It remained stubbornly lifeless.

“You cannot be serious.”

The vibrator appeared unmoved by my distress. After several more increasingly aggressive presses, it produced one final apologetic twitch and died completely.

I dropped my head against the back of the tub with a groan.

I should have charged it. I had meant to charge it on several occasions, but I only ever seemed to remember when I was already in bed, rushing out of the flat or holding something that would suffer if dropped, such as a mug of tea or the cat.

The charging cable was somewhere in the bedroom. Probably behind the chest of drawers, where cables went to gather dust and await the eventual collapse of civilisation. Retrieving it would require getting out of the bath, drying myself, crawling around on the carpet and then waiting at least an hour for the toy to accumulate enough power to be useful.

By then, the water would be cold, the wine would be warm and my brief enthusiasm for being a sexual creature would have shrivelled beneath the fluorescent glare of reality.

I placed the useless vibrator on the folded towel beside the bath and picked up my wine instead. Apparently, the universe had something against my sex life.

It had certainly done very little to encourage one.

At thirty-one, I had imagined I would be sharing a bath with someone occasionally, or at least complaining about someone leaving wet towels on the floor. I had not expected to spend Thursday evenings alone, drinking supermarket rosé while a battery-powered rabbit failed to rise to the occasion.

There were advantages to being single, of course. Nobody snored beside me, stole the duvet or left strange hairs in the sink. I could eat cereal for dinner, spread diagonally across the bed and fill the sofa with decorative cushions without having to defend their contribution to the household.

Most of the time, I enjoyed living alone. Tonight, however, independence felt suspiciously like loneliness wearing better clothes.

I took a long drink while the whales on my phone became increasingly emotional.

“Oh, shut up,” I muttered.

The doorbell rang.

I froze with the glass halfway to my lips. I waited, hoping whoever stood outside would assume I wasn’t home and go away, but a second ring followed, longer and more determined than the first.

I glanced at the bathroom door. It was nearly nine o’clock, and everyone who knew me well enough to visit also knew I considered arriving without warning an act of aggression.

The bell sounded for a third time.

“Coming!” I shouted.

The word echoed around the bathroom. I looked mournfully at the dead vibrator and added under my breath, “Not anymore.”

I climbed out of the bath, scattering bubbles across the mat, and reached for the dressing gown hanging from the back of the door. It was fluffy, lilac and considerably less dignified than I would have preferred for confronting an unknown evening visitor, but it covered the important parts. I knotted it tightly around my waist, shoved my damp hair away from my face and stepped into the hallway.

The cat was waiting directly outside.

He looked from me to the closed bathroom door, then back again with the wounded expression of an animal who had been denied his fundamental right to watch me bathe.

“You survived,” I told him. “Against all odds.”

He chirped and trotted towards the front door, apparently willing to forgive me if something interesting awaited us on the other side.

I followed, leaving wet footprints on the laminate. When I peered through the spyhole, I found the communal hallway empty.

Of course it was.

Whoever had rung the bell had evidently become impatient during the forty seconds it had taken me to put on a dressing gown. Either that, or one of the neighbour’s children had discovered the thrilling world of nuisance ringing.

The cat wound around my ankles while I opened the door.

There was nobody on the landing. No footsteps hurried down the stairs, no lift doors slid shut and no shadow moved behind the frosted glass of the building’s entrance.

There was only a cardboard box sitting on my doormat.

It was large enough that I could probably have curled up inside it, though doing so would require confronting several personal choices I was not currently prepared to examine. The cardboard was clean and unmarked apart from my name, handwritten in thick black ink across the top.

MAE HARTLEY

There was no courier label, no company logo and no return address. Not even one of those mysterious barcodes that somehow conveyed a parcel’s entire history to a delivery driver while telling the recipient absolutely nothing.

I leaned into the hallway and looked down the stairs. “Hello?”

Silence answered me.

The security door downstairs was supposed to lock after six, though its effectiveness depended heavily on whether anyone had wedged a takeaway menu beneath it. Even so, I should have heard the courier leaving. The building was old enough that every footstep on the stairs sounded like someone dismantling a wardrobe.

The box had not been there when I came home. I was sure of it, mostly because the neighbour across the landing had left six empty milk bottles beside his door, and I had nearly fallen over them while trying to find my keys.

The cat pushed his head past my calf and sniffed eagerly at the mysterious parcel.

“No.” I blocked him with one bare foot. “You don’t know what’s in there.”

He stared up at me.

“Fine, neither do I, but I’m the one who pays the rent.”

I crouched and slipped my hands beneath the sides. The box was surprisingly light. Whatever lay inside shifted with a faint rustle when I lifted it, but there was no heavy thump of books or bottles. That ruled out most of my usual late-night shopping mistakes, though even my worst wine-assisted purchases generally came with a confirmation email.

I carried the parcel inside and set it on the living-room rug. The cat followed closely, circling the box and sniffing each corner with the concentration of a trained customs officer.

“Could be a bomb,” I said.

He rubbed his cheek against the cardboard.

“Glad you’re concerned.”

I closed the front door, then knelt beside the parcel. The strip of clear tape running along the top was perfectly smooth, without a folded edge or wrinkle I could catch beneath my nail. I scratched at one end until my thumbnail bent painfully backwards.

“Ow. Bastard.”

The cat sat down beside me and watched with open contempt.

“You’re welcome to try.”

He placed one paw on the lid.

“That wasn’t an invitation.”

I nudged him away and attacked the tape from the opposite corner. It looked like ordinary packing tape, yet it clung to the cardboard as though the two materials had been fused together. I dug at it with both thumbnails, then picked at the seam with all five fingers, producing nothing but a faint squeak.

Tape was not supposed to behave like this. Its entire purpose was to peel off when you did not want it to, stick to itself and collect every loose hair within a ten-metre radius. This strip appeared to have made a lifelong commitment to the box.

I hooked my nails beneath the thinnest visible edge and pulled hard enough to make my fingertips ache.

Nothing moved.

“Right. Scissors.”

The cat immediately took my place beside the parcel as I went into the kitchen. The drawer containing the scissors also held three takeaway menus, several dead batteries, a tape measure and one lonely wooden chopstick whose partner had disappeared years ago. I found the large black-handled scissors buried beneath a nest of elastic bands and returned to the living room.

The cat had put both front paws on the box and was attempting to push his nose beneath one of the flaps.

“Move.”

He ignored me.

I lifted him bodily and placed him several feet away. “I realise cardboard is your ancestral homeland, but this one is mine.”

He flicked his tail and watched me with narrowed eyes.

I slid one blade of the scissors towards the seam. Or tried to. The point refused to slip beneath the tape, no matter how I angled it. I applied a little more pressure, careful to keep the blade directed away from my hand.

The tape remained smooth and unmarked.

I frowned and repositioned the scissors. “Come on.”

The moment I opened the blades, the tape detached itself from the box.

I stopped moving.

For one impossible second, the entire strip hovered loose above the cardboard. Then it slipped from the lid and fell onto the carpet in a perfect, limp ribbon.

The scissors remained raised in my hand as I stared at it.

Beside me, the cat made a questioning little sound.

“You saw that.”

He approached the fallen tape and sniffed it.

I lowered the scissors slowly. The strip had not torn or been cut. It had simply released its grip all at once, almost as though the sight of the scissors had persuaded it that further resistance was unwise.

I picked it up between two fingers. It looked and felt like perfectly ordinary tape. One side was sticky, although not sticky enough to explain why I had been unable to peel it from the box less than ten seconds ago.

I looked from the tape to the parcel. “This is how horror films begin.”

The cat placed his front paws on the lid again.

“Move.”

He did not.

I tucked him under one arm and deposited him behind me. Before he could return, I slid my fingers beneath the cardboard flaps.

I could still stop. I could put the box back outside, contact the building manager or call the police and report a suspicious parcel containing an unusually stubborn piece of tape. They would definitely take that seriously and would not laugh about me for the rest of the year.

I opened the first flap.

Nothing exploded.

I opened the second and found the box filled with pink tissue paper, neatly folded around something long and curved.

The cat leaned over the edge beside me.

I pushed his face away without looking. “Personal space.”

I peeled back the tissue paper.

A large pink rabbit vibrator lay nestled inside.

I blinked.

It was not merely similar to the one currently lying dead beside the bath. It was a far more luxurious version, with a velvety surface, several intriguing buttons and a curved attachment that suggested considerably more ambition than anything I had previously owned.

For several moments, I simply stared.

Then I looked beneath it, expecting to find a receipt, an instruction booklet or a note from whichever of my friends had decided to play a very expensive joke.

There was nothing.

No retail packaging, no charger and no explanation for why a stranger had left a premium sex toy outside my flat moments after my own vibrator had died.

I lifted it cautiously from the tissue paper. It was pleasantly heavy in my hand, and a tiny light glowed near the base.

Fully charged.

“Well,” I murmured. “That’s not ominous at all.”

The cat stretched his neck towards it.

I snatched the vibrator out of reach. “No. Absolutely not. There are boundaries.”

He tried again, apparently unconvinced that any object in the flat could legitimately belong to someone else.

I placed the toy on top of the box and searched through the tissue paper more thoroughly. Perhaps a card had slipped beneath it, or there was a promotional leaflet explaining that I had been selected for an extremely invasive product trial. At this point, even targeted advertising would have been reassuring.

The box contained nothing else.

I lifted it to inspect the bottom, then turned it to check the remaining sides. The cardboard was blank apart from a white rectangular sticker fixed neatly to the centre of one panel.

I frowned.

I was certain it had not been there before.

That side had rested against my body when I carried the parcel inside. I had examined every surface on the landing while searching for a sender’s address. The cardboard had been completely bare.

Now the label sat there as though it had always belonged.

One word was printed across it in ornate, curling letters.

Enjoy.