What makes a house a home?

For Eve Gallagher, home is miles away in England since she and her husband relocated to an apartment building on New York's Upper East Side. And life isn't remotely coming up roses.

What makes a neighbour a friend?

Violet has lived in the building for decades but she's always kept herself apart, until Eve's loneliness touches her heart and friendship blossoms.

What makes a wife a lover?

Jason Kramer in Apartment 6A is no longer sure he loves his wife, but he's head-over-heels for Rachael Schulman in 6B.

What makes the girl next door the woman of your dreams?

Meeting Emily Mikanowski from 3A turns Trip Grayling's world upside down. It's love at first sight, but he needs help from Charlotte, the shy romance addict in 2A, if he's going to win the girl.

Dreams come true, hearts are broken and no one is left unchanged when the secrets and desires hidden behind closed doors are finally brought into the light.

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Eight a.m.

The night doorman, Jesus, was coming off his shift. Before Raoul, his replacement, arrived, he mopped the marble foyer, and diligently polished the brass tread on the door threshold. The day-shift doorman changed into his smart grey uniform in the staff bathroom. The porter travelled to each floor in the service elevator, collecting the black sacks of trash and sorted recycling that people left out there. In the basement, the super checked his list to see who was on, who was away, who was having things delivered or taken away. He¡¯d done this fifty weeks of each year for more than fifteen years. He and his wife lived in a small apartment at the back downstairs. They¡¯d raised their boys there, though they were grown up and gone now.

In apartment 7B, Maria Piscatella kissed her husband Earnest goodbye, chastely on the cheek, smoothing his hair down habitually as he left for work, and contemplated the breakfast dishes and another day. Her two children smiled down at her in their high-school graduation outfits, from the 8¡ä¡ä ¡Á 10¡ä¡ä photographs that hung on the kitchen wall. She knew they¡¯d both still be asleep, in their college beds in their college dorms far away. Up late, no doubt, last night studying or partying. Bradley had been gone from here two years, and Ariel since last September, and she still missed them every day. The apartment was still too quiet. There wasn¡¯t enough mess. She had two plates, two glasses and two mugs to load into the dishwasher. One bed to make. And no laundry today. If you¡¯d told her ten years ago how much she would miss all of that, she¡¯d have laughed and told you you were crazy.

Upstairs, in 8A/B Blair Stewart¡¯s housekeeper Mary would also have laughed. She¡¯d been up since six, waking alone in the windowless maid¡¯s room off the laundry, as she had done for the past six months, and now she was serving waffles ¨C each plate configured slightly differently ¨C to the Stewarts¡¯ three kids, while Blair issued the day¡¯s instructions, and Bobbie moaned that the dry cleaners hadn¡¯t returned his grey pinstripe. Mary didn¡¯t mind being told what to do (wrong career path, if she did), but she hated the way Mrs Stewart did it. When she said ¡®clean the laundry room¡¯, she always added ¡®really well, please, Mary¡¯ as though there were any other way to do it, or as if she ever did anything else. You¡¯d think a woman who was so damn particular about how things were done would do some of them herself. But, of course, Mrs Stewart was perpetually busy. Today was a luncheon. Mary had still to figure out what elevated a regular lunch by those three letters into a luncheon, but she figured it had something to do with money. Mrs Stewart would go to that gym, on the corner of Madison and 85th, the one she went to every day during the week, and then get her hair blown out and get dressed up to go out and ¡®do good¡¯. Forget about doing any good in her own home. Mary didn¡¯t like Blair Stewart at all. God knows she needed a job, and the money wasn¡¯t bad here, but if it weren¡¯t for the kids, she¡¯d be thinking about finding something else already. The kids were okay. A little lazy, a little spoilt maybe ¨C but whose kids weren¡¯t, these days?

Dr Hunter Stern, in 4A, slept on. He never had a patient until 11 a.m., and since he saw patients in the apartment, he never needed to get up before 10.30. An insomniac since his twenties, he was never asleep before three or four in the morning, and he wore earplugs so that the cacophony of a Manhattan morning didn¡¯t disturb him once he had dropped off. He couldn¡¯t take sleeping pills. He had an addictive personality, like so many of the patients he counselled. That ruled out red wine, too, which would also have worked. He read biographies avidly, and usually dozed off, eventually, on the sofa, heavy tomes rising and falling on his chest.

Across the hall, Violet Wallace fried an egg and two rashers of bacon, as she did every morning of the week. She carried the plate through to the dining room, where she had laid the table the night before, with a linen napkin and silver cutlery, and switched on the BBC World Service on the radio. Cat, the smoky Abyssinian cat she had resisted getting for so long, refusing to conform to the stereotype of the single old lady, and whom she still tokenly resisted loving by calling her Cat, curled her tail around Violet¡¯s chair, rubbing her back against Violet¡¯s legs, oblivious to her mistress¡¯s ambivalence.

Above her, in 5B, Gregory Cole fed Ulysses, his chocolate-brown Labrador, who licked his hand appreciatively, while his partner Todd took a shower. Todd ate breakfast with his assistant, Gabrielle, at the office every day, so Greg made a bowl of granola with yoghurt for himself, and flipped open the Times, leaning against the granite breakfast bar in their kitchen.

¡®Sit down to eat,¡¯ Todd called from the bedroom.

¡®You can¡¯t even see me!¡¯

¡®Doesn¡¯t mean I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re doing . . .¡¯

Charlotte Murphy peered into the mirror, as she did every morning in 2A, and was, as she was every morning, disappointed to see herself peering back. Through the thin partition wall in 2B, built before building codes came into effect, Madison Cavanagh had the opposite reaction as she tossed her mane of Bergdorf Blonde hair, and carefully applied another coat of lengthening mascara to lashes that already almost hit her eyebrows.

Upstairs in 3A, newcomer Emily Mikanowski stretched her body into the Cat on her yoga mat, trying to ignore the pile of boxes in the living room that still needed to be unpacked, while next door Arthur Alexander dreamed his troubled dreams and snored, spittle settling into the corners of his mouth, and on the other side Hung Hamazaki, just back from a fast threemile run, turned on the shower and hoped the hot water would come through fast. He liked to be at his desk at work by 8.45.

The furnace burned, and the pipes ran. Kettles boiled on stovetops, and radiators creaked.

The building was waking up.