“Maria wandered the empty rooms of the rich with her dustpan and brush, and had their lives, down to the shower gel. There was nothing surprising about them after all, these people with blood-smeared diaries and clean smiles. The pornographic magazines were only remarkable once, though seven pairs of jeans, the same make and size, gave her a fright every time. She tried all the cosmetics in the bathroom cabinet. She cocked the guns and smoothed the sheets with a feeling hand.

The only thing she stole was the music, and even then she left no trace. Each disc she slid out of its sleeve was a different room to clean; the melody curving into the corners, making a joke of the gaps. She hummed as she went, imagining herself into a cleaning woman with a taste for Bach. Imagining herself into a woman who had, somehow, grown into a complete box set of Wagner's Ring cycle and a scratched half-hour of Al Stewart's The Year of the Cat.”

What Are You Like?, Anne Enright