Olga dragged her suitcase to her apartment door on the fifth floor, and for a moment she didn’t realize she was standing in front of her own door that simply wouldn’t open. The key slid in like always, but no matter how hard she tried, it wouldn’t turn—not even a millimeter, as if something was jammed in the lock.
She pulled out her key, checked the apartment number, glanced at her keychain, then tried again with more force, but the lock refused to budge no matter what.
Two months at her sister’s in Anapa, a flight delayed by three hours, suffocating heat on the airport bus—and now, a door that wouldn’t open to her own key. Olga knocked with her knuckles, then her palm, then just about pounded on the door. Someone rustled behind it, the latch clacked, and there stood a stranger—a woman with wet hair from a shower, a towel slung over her shoulder, and on her feet were Olga’s very own house slippers: pink, with worn-out fur at the toes, bought at a sale two winters ago.
The woman glanced at the suitcase, then at Olga, and didn’t show the slightest hint of confusion on her face.
“You must be Olga,” she said, like she’d already rehearsed for this conversation. “Denis mentioned you might stop by. I’m Alina.”
Olga kept her hand on the suitcase handle, trying to make sense of what was happening in her own hallway—now only visible through the narrow gap of the half-open door—and couldn’t recognize it. The shoe cabinet was out of place. On the hook hung a strange jacket, a man’s leather coat with a fur collar, something Denis had never owned.
On the doormat, where her old ‘Welcome’ rug used to be, now lay a new gray one with a herringbone pattern. The photo with her son, always on the hallway shelf, had vanished—replaced now by a vase filled with artificial eucalyptus branches.
“Do you… live here?” Olga asked, her voice shaking not out of fear, but because the question sounded ridiculous even to herself.
“Yes, Denis and I live here,” Alina nodded, backing up as if inviting Olga to look inside—but not step in. “He was supposed to let you know. We moved in back in July!”
Olga took a step forward, but Alina gently but firmly placed her foot so the door wouldn’t open any further.
“I’m sorry, I know this must sound strange,” Alina continued in a calm, polite tone—the kind you use with difficult customers. “But we really don’t have much time. Denis said you’d come by for the rest of your things. By the weekend. We’re expecting guests on Saturday.”
“What guests? This is my apartment!” Olga declared, surprised at how even her voice sounded, though she was shaking with anger inside. “I bought it before the marriage, all the papers are in my name. Denis was supposed to come get his things in the spring, and that was it, not…”
“Oh… I don’t know anything about that,” Alina interrupted with a shrug, as if talk of documents was outside her responsibilities. “I only know what my husband told me. He said the apartment situation is settled and you’re aware of everything.”
“I’m not aware,” Olga replied. “I was messaging him about this place just two weeks ago—he said he’d move out by September.”
“Move out of the apartment by the weekend,” Alina repeated, as if she hadn’t heard a word, a hint of irritation finally showing in her voice. “I don’t like having to say this. But Denis warned me you’d argue. Just take what’s yours and let’s end this on good terms!”
Behind Alina, a cupboard door slammed shut in the hallway. Someone was moving boxes, dragging something heavy across the floor.
“Let me in!” Olga demanded, pushing the door with her palm.
Alina didn’t budge, just tightened her grip on the towel she was holding against her chest, like a shield.
“I really don’t want to argue with you at the door,” Alina said more quietly, but still didn’t move. “Call Denis, let him explain everything himself. It’s his apartment, he said you two are divorced, and he’s registered here.”
“That’s not true,” Olga replied. “And it’s not his, it’s mine.”
Alina looked at her as if Olga had the wrong floor, then gently closed the door, as though afraid of catching Olga’s fingers, and the lock clicked softly.
Olga was left standing on the landing with her suitcase, listening to the sounds of furniture being moved behind the door.
***
She went down the stairs slowly, dragging her suitcase so loudly that its wheels echoed through the entire building. Outside, she sat on a bench near the playground, pulled out her phone, and called Denis – three rings, then hung up. She called again, and once more it just kept ringing with no answer or voicemail until it finally disconnected.
She wrote: “Denis, I’m standing by the apartment and your woman won’t let me in. What is going on???”
Fifteen minutes passed with no reply, so she wrote again, shorter this time: “Call me. It’s urgent.”
Olga called her friend Natasha—her only friend still in town who might know where she could stay for the night. Natasha didn’t pick up right away, and when she finally did, there was a TV and a child’s voice in the background. After listening to Olga’s jumbled story about a strange lock and a woman in slippers, Natasha just sighed and explained her kid was sick and they were in quarantine.
***
By nine in the evening, her phone battery had dropped to forty percent from non-stop calls, but Denis still hadn’t answered once. Around eleven, she finally got a message: Olga, I’ll come by tonight, we’ll talk, don’t start.
Olga read the message twice, searching for any mention that a stranger was in the apartment, a new jacket on the coat rack, the furniture moved around. But the words “don’t start” had nothing to do with any of that.
She went back into the building, climbed to her floor, and sat right on the steps in front of the door, placing her suitcase next to her like an armrest. Voices came from inside—quiet and mundane, as if dinner was being served.
The hallway light turned off every ninety seconds, and Olga had to keep slapping the switch just to see the number on the door. She did this about forty times over the next ninety minutes, leaving a grey mark on her palm from the concrete wall.
Her neighbor from the fourth floor passed by with grocery bags, paused, recognized Olga, and asked if she was sick, since she was sitting on the floor. But when Olga didn’t reply clearly, the neighbor just went to her own apartment without asking anything else.
Denis showed up at quarter to midnight. Olga heard his footsteps on the stairs even before she saw him—he always took the steps two at a time, but slowed down on the last flight, as if preparing himself for whatever he’d face at home. This time, he actually stopped on the landing one floor below and stood there for almost a minute before climbing the rest of the way.
When Denis saw Olga sitting on the steps, he simply walked past her, gave a short nod—the kind you give a neighbor you don’t want to chat with—and started fishing for his keys in his pocket.
“Are you seriously just going to walk right past me to my own door?” Olga said, jumping to her feet so quickly her suitcase toppled over with a loud crash. “Denis, you have some woman living in my apartment, wearing my slippers, and you’re just going to silently open the door with your key?”
“Don’t yell, you’ll wake up the neighbors!” he snapped without turning around, as he put his key in the lock.
“I’m not yelling, I’m asking!” Her voice broke into a scream on its own, without her permission. “You promised me you’d move everything out over the summer, I left you the keys so you could close up the place and give them back to me, not so you could move someone else in, especially your girlfriend!”
The door opened, and there on the threshold, drawn out by the noise, was his Alina—no longer in a towel, but now in a robe, wearing the startled but annoyed look of someone whose calm evening had just been disrupted.
“Denis, what’s going on, why is she yelling?” Alina asked, looking back and forth between Olga and her husband.
“You did all this!” Olga said more quietly now, but with just as much steel in her voice as she stared directly at Denis. “Did you ever tell her whose apartment this is?”
Alina turned her gaze to Denis, and for a split second, something changed in her expression—as if the question had only just registered with her, finally sinking in. Denis said nothing.
“Denis,” Alina repeated, slower this time, “is this really her apartment?”
He didn’t answer; instead, he just shifted the keys from one hand to the other and wiped his sweaty palm on his jeans.
“Denis, I asked you a question!” Alina’s tone sharpened by half a note. “Whose apartment is this?”
“Ol, why do you have to start like this the second you walk in,” he finally muttered, staring somewhere at Olga’s shoulder instead of her face. “We would have figured everything out eventually, I told you I was handling it.”
“What exactly are you handling, Denis, when you’ve got a woman standing in my bathroom? When were you planning to tell her the apartment isn’t yours—at the housewarming a year from now?”
Alina stepped forward, standing beside him shoulder to shoulder, as if a silent decision had already been made, and looked at Olga with the same firmness as before, only now, a flash of anger had joined it.
“You know what,” she said, pulling her phone from the pocket of her robe, “I’m sick of people yelling outside my door at midnight. I’m calling the police right now—let them sort out who’s causing all this commotion in the building!”
Denis started to reach for her hand, but stopped halfway, like he couldn’t decide what was worse—trying to stop his wife in front of his ex, or letting her finish. He just stayed standing between them.
Alina began dialing, never taking her eyes off Olga, and the landing went quiet—it was just the beeping of the phone buttons and the shuffle of someone behind one of the neighbor’s doors, now cracked open a little.
“Alina, wait, don’t call the police,” Denis said quietly, but she had already raised the phone to her ear and turned toward the staircase window, as if talking to the dispatcher was more important than anything going on behind her.
***
“Yes, hello,” Alina said into the receiver, her voice now trembling not from anger, but from the dispatcher taking too long to respond. “We’re having a scene out here—my husband’s ex-wife showed up, shouting so loudly she’s waking up the neighbors. Yes, I’m reading out the address.”
“And tell them this apartment is mine,” Olga said loudly so the dispatcher could definitely hear her through the phone. “Let them come with documents and sort it out right away. That’ll save everyone time.”
Alina pulled the phone away from her ear for just a moment and shot Olga a look full of hatred, but didn’t stop giving the address. Denis stood between them, glancing from his wife to his ex-wife, never once trying to take Alina’s phone away.
While Alina recited the house number and floor, Olga stepped through the half-open door—brushing past Denis, who moved aside more out of habit than intent—and walked into the hallway toward the closet with the loose door. She moved aside the winter blankets from the top shelf, felt underneath for a thick plastic bag, and pulled out a box full of documents.
“What are you doing? This is our apartment!” Alina burst into the hallway, having just ended her call, and froze as she saw Olga spreading out papers on the shoe cabinet—a certificate of ownership, a purchase agreement, an official extract dated last year.
“Read slowly,” Olga said as she slid the documents closer to the light from the mirror lamp. “Owner: Olga Viktorovna Merkulova. Not a single mention of Denis Merkulov, because I bought this apartment two years before we even met.”
Denis tried to take one of the sheets, as if he wanted to look at it more closely, but Olga held the paper down with her hand.
“Don’t touch it, this isn’t yours,” she said, and he pulled his hand back as if the paper had burned him.
Alina kept glancing back and forth between the documents and her husband, her expression slowly changing—not to fear, but hardening, as if she was already planning what she’d say to him later, when they were alone.
“Denis,” she said slowly, “you told me you were putting the apartment in both our names. You said the paperwork was just a formality, and that your ex was only dragging it out to be difficult.”
“Olga, I was going to explain everything, I just didn’t think you’d actually come today,” Denis began, but didn’t get the chance to finish—there was a short and insistent ring at the door, and two uniformed officers appeared in the hallway.
One of them, the taller one, took in Olga standing by the door with a suitcase, then Alina holding her phone, and asked who had called the police about the disturbance. Alina raised her hand, like in school, and quickly started telling them how her husband’s ex-wife caused a scene at the door in the middle of the night, scared the neighbors, and kept them from eating dinner in peace.
“Ma’am, please show your passport,” the police officer said to Olga in the kind of voice you use for someone you’ve already labeled a troublemaker. “And please step away from the door.”
Olga handed over her passport, her cheeks burning at how quickly the roles in this scene had fallen into place without her input: the troublemaker at someone else’s door, the family she’d come to disturb. She stood in silence as the officer flipped through her passport, checking the photo, and only then, without waiting for more questions, she reached for her folder of documents.
“Is this your apartment?” the officer asked, his tone now different as he examined Olga’s suitcase and the battered folder in her hands.
“Here are the documents,” Olga said, handing him the certificate and an extract. “I just got back from vacation, and now I can’t get into my own apartment. My key doesn’t work, someone changed the lock without telling me, and there’s a stranger living here…”
The police officer glanced through the papers, checked the last name, asked for her passport again, checked once more, and then turned to Denis.
“And who are you?”
“I’m her ex-husband,” Denis answered, staring at the floor as if something important was written there.
“Are you registered here?”
“Yes, I’m registered.”
“And your wife—” the officer nodded at Alina, “is she the owner, co-owner, registered here?”
Alina stayed quiet for three seconds, but in that time, her face shifted through surprise, anger, and something that looked like fear.
“No,” she finally said softly. “I’ve just been living here since July.”
“Then this is a civil dispute, not hooliganism,” the younger officer said, speaking more to his partner than to anyone else. “The owner came back to her apartment, and strangers are keeping her out. Technically, it’s them who should be leaving, not her.”
“Strangers,” Alina mouthed, almost tasting the word and not finding anything true in it.
The officers didn’t get involved any further. They said this wasn’t really their job and advised everyone to settle the eviction through court if they couldn’t work it out peacefully. They handed back the documents and started down the stairs. The taller one told Alina on his way out that next time, she should check the paperwork before calling the police, instead of dialing 102 right away.
At that moment, Alina suddenly turned to Denis.
“You’re a complete idiot and a liar!” she spat out, every word sharper than anything in the half-hour argument before. “You used me just so you wouldn’t have to deal with your ex-wife yourself!”
“I didn’t use you, what are you talking about! I just…”
“You just moved me into a stranger’s apartment and kept quiet for two months? Do you even know how I look to these people right now?”
“I thought you were sorting out the renovation,” Alina said more quietly now, her voice cracking with a hurt that had been building and finally burst through. “You told me your ex was just dragging her feet with the documents, that everything was fine, we just needed to sign a couple more papers.”
“So what was I supposed to say, that the apartment isn’t even mine?” Denis threw up his hands, and in that gesture there was more frustration than guilt. “You never would have moved in if I told you the truth. I just wanted to keep things simple.”
“Simple for who, for you?” Alina stepped up to him, almost nose to nose. “I told my parents we moved into our own place. I carried all those boxes…”
Denis tried to put a hand on her shoulder, but she shook him off so abruptly that she bumped her elbow against the doorframe, then stormed deeper into the apartment, slamming the bathroom door shut.
Olga was left standing alone in the hallway, surrounded by her own documents and apologies from others that she no longer needed. She took out her phone and, before Denis could say anything, called the 24-hour locksmith service, gave them the address, and asked them to come as soon as possible—even if it meant paying double, even in the middle of the night.
“Olya, maybe it doesn’t have to be tonight. I could take care of it in the morning…” Denis started, but she interrupted him, never raising her voice:
“By morning you’ll both be out of here. I’m changing the lock now, so no one can come in with a key that doesn’t belong to them anymore.”
The locksmith arrived forty minutes later: an older man in a worn-out jacket, carrying his toolbox, and without asking any unnecessary questions, began removing the old lock—one that had been installed without her knowing.
Olga sat on a stool by the door, back straight, wrapped up in a jacket because the door to the hallway was still open and the damp September air drifted in from the stairwell. She watched the locksmith replace the cylinder like it was so much more than just a piece of metal in the door. Denis paced by the stairwell window, occasionally pulling out his phone then putting it back, unable to decide whether to call someone or try talking to Olga.
Alina came out of the bathroom, now dressed in jeans and a sweater with her hair tousled from a recent shower. Without looking at anyone, she started pulling boxes down from the top shelf—the same boxes Olga had glimpsed through the door crack three hours earlier. Alina moved with sharp, angry motions, dropping towels and a makeup bag, nearly knocking the locksmith over at one point as he worked on the lock.
One box was labeled ‘kitchen’ in black marker, another ‘Alina, Winter.’ From the bathroom shelf, she scooped up her creams and toothbrush, tossing them all into a grocery bag without bothering to sort them.
“Need any help?” Denis finally got up the nerve to ask.
“I’ve got it,” Alina replied without turning around, throwing her hairdryer—cord hastily coiled—into an open box.
By four in the morning, the hallway was packed with boxes and bags. The locksmith had handed Olga two shiny new keys, still smelling of machine oil.
Denis tried one last time to talk things over, saying maybe they could have discussed everything calmly, that it didn’t have to end with police and a locksmith arriving in the middle of the night.
“So what should it have come to, Denis?” Olga asked, not taking her eyes off the set of new keys she was turning over in her hands. “Should I have found out about this apartment from the neighbors a month from now?”
He couldn’t think of anything to say in response.
***
By morning, the sun was up enough that the hallway lights switched off automatically, and Denis and Alina were carrying out the last boxes to the car.
On the landing between the floors, they ran into their neighbor from the fourth floor—the same one who had walked past Olga sitting on the floor the night before, her arms full of grocery bags. Now, she glanced at their boxes, at Alina’s tear-stained face, at Denis with two bags slung over his shoulders, but didn’t say a word. She simply stepped aside, making room for them on the stairs.
As Alina walked past Olga for the last time, she placed a pair of pink slippers with worn-out fur by the door.
“I’m sorry it ended up like this,” she suddenly said, not meeting Olga’s eyes, and quickly turned away, as if she instantly regretted speaking at all.
Denis lingered at the doorway with a bag in his hand, looking like he wanted to say something meaningful one last time. But Olga had already leaned down to pick up the gray doormat with someone else’s name on it—the one that had appeared out of nowhere. She shoved it into a bag and handed it to him.
“Keep the keys as a memento,” she said, then closed the door behind her, turning the new lock twice.