‘Favourite colour? No idea. But his darkest secrets? Those I knew well...’

I'd rehearsed that line in my head for hours, ever since Peter moved in. Nosy, loud, and insufferably chirpy—he was the human equivalent of a broken alarm clock, always going off when you least expected.

The flat used to have quiet corners. Now, even silence had to shout.

It was strange how quickly he wanted to know about Thomas. Kept probing—_what was he like? What did he do? Did he have a favourite colour?_ He asked that last one at one evening, while clicking his fingers inches from my face to drag me out of a perfectly good train of thought.

I stared at the flickering lamp behind him and replied, “Favourite colour? No idea. But his darkest secrets? Those I knew well...”

Peter laughed like it was a joke. It wasn't.

Thomas hadn’t been the easiest person to live with. Private to the point of suspicious. Quiet, yes, but not always calm. The night he died, the air felt wrong. No struggle, no sounds—but secrets carry weight, and eventually, they crack the floorboards.

What Peter didn’t know—what he couldn’t know—was why Thomas was no longer around. That secret was buried with him. Mostly.

Peter grew more insistent. He threatened to dig into Thomas’s past. “I’ve got friends in IT, you know,” he said, waving his phone like it was a sword. “I’ll find out what happened. Just you wait.”

I smiled politely. I always smile when someone gets too close to the truth.

Peter talks a lot. He’s careless. He leaves doors open, searches unguarded, thoughts half-expressed. It won’t be long before he steps where he shouldn’t. And when he does?

Well.

Favourite colour? Still no idea. But I'm getting quite good at handling secrets. Especially the dark ones.