It’s 5 a.m. ; I open my eyes. I sense a presence; I know what I’m going to see. She’s lying by my side, naked. Sheila gives a small smile and, seeing my expression, says in Portuguese, “I’m a dream, I’m not real. Go back to sleep.”

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Much earlier, I had thought I heard the creak of my bedroom door. Half-asleep, knowing the doors rattle in the wind, I dismissed it: imagination. I muttered, and the door seemed to close ever so softly. Was it simply the wind?

Memory intrudes — another house, same city — waking in the night, my bedroom light flicking on, young men bursting in, a knife flashing, tying me up, robbing me.

Fear rises. I switch on the lights that work and search the apartment: living room, cupboards, bathroom, small balcony. Nothing. Maybe I’ve been too long in Africa, I think grimly. Back in my room, something catches my eye — the small table near the door. A short white dress with an embroidered motif lies crumpled there. Some notes of money beside it. Flat-soled shoes on the floor. I lift the dress; the familiar scent of her perfume rises. Sheila is somewhere in the apartment. I search again. The balcony: nothing but two low-slung wooden armchairs.

As if moving through a dream, I wonder — can people walk in and out through closed doors? Many Africans believe they can. Thinking like this this frightens me. Sheila once told me she had demons inside her, that her grandfather and mother had special powers. I had seen her a couple of times, rising from bed in a trance, in the middle of the night, sitting at my desk, speaking in a man’s voice eerily like my own, then returning to sleep like a zombie. But was she truly capable of entering and leaving unseen? I search a second time: nothing. With the bedroom light left on, I lie still, straining for any sound. I’m too long in Africa, I think, as I feel a slight shiver of fear. For an hour, I resist. Then I succumb to a deep sleep.

When I wake, I know what I will see. She is there, smiling slightly, mocking: “You opened the door for me yourself.” I say nothing. She wants to make love. Afterwards, exhausted, I fall into a deeper sleep. In the morning, the usual lies: she climbed the back stairs; she came down from the roof; she slipped in through the washing area. I know all these are impossible. Then I notice it: a small tear in the mosquito netting of the balcony door. She had reached through, opened it. She had climbed up — four stories — at night. Surely drunk. She had lain curled under one of the armchairs on the balcony while I searched.

How had I missed her? Each of the three balconies below mine is guarded by metal bars against robbers. Mine is not. Sheila had slung her shoes and bag around her neck and climbed, threading hands and feet through the bars. So dangerous. She won’t admit it. “I came up the back way,” she insists. “You didn’t answer your calls. I thought you were with another woman.” I empty her bag. A flutter of paper — a list of recent phone numbers copied from my mobile phone. She’d had time to spy. I tear the paper into little pieces. A small plastic bottle falls out, filled with red liquid, labelled in Changana — witch’s brew? Pushing her toward the door, I tell her it was this kind of behaviour that drove her last boyfriend away. She shakes her head, dabbing at tears, while stealing a glance at herself in the mirror behind me. “No,” she sobs. “It was because I stabbed the girl I found him with.”

I am sure if she’d found someone in my bed, she would have gone to the kitchen for a knife. As she places her foot on the first step down, she turns and says softly, “You know I love you.” Later, looking over the balcony four floors down, it is easy to imagine a crumpled body in a short white dress lying on the pavement below. I was angry — but also, strangely, flattered. No one had ever done anything like that for me before. Some days later, meeting the man who lived on the third floor, I asked if he had seen anything that night. He was a night owl, played music late every night.

“Yes,” he said casually. “I saw a girl climb past my window around two a.m.” “But why didn’t you do something?” I asked, shocked. “If it had been a man, I’d have called the police,” he shrugged. “Anyway, I knew she was your friend.