Stylised owl with swirling ornament

It was not a large bird, but it sat very upright and very still, its round eyes fixed on the lift shaft as though the lift owed it money. The residents complained about the pigeons, the draughts, the broken bin chute, but nobody complained about the owl, because nobody could agree on what it was. Mr Costello on six swore it had feathers like the scrolled ironwork the council had painted over in 1978. Winifred had seen that ironwork as a girl, when the balconies were still black and curling like fern heads, and she thought he might be right.

On the fourth night she took the service stairs up with a flask of tea and a packet of digestive biscuits, meaning only to check the rail. The owl turned its head all the way round as she came out onto the landing, then turned it back, unhurried, as if she had passed some test. She sat on the cold concrete step and poured the tea. 'You're not from round here,' she said. The owl blinked, slowly, one eye and then the other, and a long curl of feather lifted from its wing and drifted down past the railings toward the car park six storeys below.

She finished her tea. When she stood, the rail was empty, and on the concrete where the owl had been sat a single iron scroll, the kind that had once framed the balconies, still faintly warm. She turned it over in her palm and followed the curl with her thumb all the way to the middle, where it ended in a point like a beak. She slipped it into her apron pocket and went down to finish her shift, the lift humming below her all the way.