Library

The street curves gracefully, designed in such a way that it feels like walking in a straight line. Shops and services line its sides, the occasional rib of a side street jutting off between them, and then it passes over a viaduct and we look down to see a man bleeding out on a sofa below, red running into the leaf-litter by their side. Ah well, I guess that life can do that to people, sometimes anyway.

We carry on, the gait of a couple years experience showing the way up the stairs and into the room filled with plastic bound books and tacky tables and chairs. It smells fresh in here, newly cleaned. I settle down, taking a book off the nearest shelf and start to read.