First published in 2001.

— — — — — — — — —

A street in Kentish Town, London.

Everything is exactly the same shade of grey — the pavement beneath her, the road to her right, the concrete buildings on either side.

Even the sky, a blanket of rippled granite hanging low, is the same miserable shade… and as the buildings are high in this part of the city , the whole street looks like a boxed, concrete tunnel.

Elizabeth walks down this tunnel street, long coat buttoned up.

She is alone.

Everybody walks alone on this tunnel street. Hundreds of people busy themselves with trying to get to work in time, trying to dodge past that woman with the pushchair, trying to catch the next tube, leaving in a few minutes.

Elizabeth feels a cold breeze and tightens her scarf, throwing one end over her left shoulder. She passes a homeless person scribbling frantically on a brick wall — walking past him, Elizabeth sees that he is making a charcoal rubbing of the bricks on a scrap of paper. She admires the odd beauty of this, briefly wondering what the purpose of the whole exercise is, before being distracted by the rising wind. It whips at her face, stinging her cold cheeks. As it gains in speed, her scarf flails around her. She goes to snatch for it, but she is a moment too late.

The scarf rides the wind across the street, landing on the other and blowing onwards. Elizabeth steps onto the road before jumping back again to avoid an oncoming car. Once it passes, she darts across to the scarf and attempts to scoop it up in mid-run. A gush of wind blows it further up the street, away from her grasp.

She stops chasing and stands with her arms crossed. “Please give me my scarf back,” she asks firmly.

Her scarf tumbles along slowly as the wind hesitates, then stops. Elizabeth walks to it and picks it up.

“This means a lot to me,” she says, stuffing the scarf into her coat pocket. “My mother gave it to me as a present.”

The furious wind rises once more, creating a small tornado of trash in a pub doorway and blowing off the hat of an old lady further up the road. Elizabeth, standing still, hugs herself tightly against the biting cold as her golden hair fans out behind her.

She waits a few moments before speaking, and the wind subsides as she does, as if it were quieting to listen to her words. “Why are you so angry?”

The wind calms further. Once it comes to a complete stop, it speaks three words.

The voice is soulless and dry.

i am lost.

“Where are you going? Maybe I can help,” Elizabeth replies to the wind.

The air is still for quite some time. Elizabeth presumes it is not going to answer her again, and carries on walking. The instant she takes a step, the whisper comes to her ear: i do not know.

“You don’t know where you’re going?”

no.

“Oh,” Elizabeth replies. “Then where did you come from?”

Another long pause. She waits, patiently.

i do not know.

“Then you really are lost,” she answers.

A man further up the street, unshaven and wearing a battered army jacket, is arguing with a traffic warden. The wind blows around Elizabeth as she passes between them, ruffling the sheathes of paper attached to the warden’s clipboard. “I was gone for two minutes!” the man in the jacket growls.

The whisper dances on the air: what is your name.

“Elizabeth. What’s yours?”

i cannot tell you.

The lack of a straight answer annoys her. A conversation with the wind is silly enough without having to deal with cryptic riddles. “Look,” she hisses, “I told you mine, why can’t you just…”

She is cut off by a blast of cold air.

no. you do not understand.

“What?”

i can not speak my name in english.

“Try,” she hisses between clenched teeth, cheeks reddening against the bitterness.

The wind dissipates in silent contemplation. Further up the street, it returns to Elizabeth with its answer: vidian.

Vidian, she mouths, rolling it over on her tongue and in her mind. “Vidian. That’s a pretty name.”

where are you going.

“The library, here,” she replies, stopping before the stone steps leading up to the library’s entrance. “I’ve got to go now, I’ve got work to do.”

where are you going.

“I just told you, the library.” Elizabeth climbs the steps hastily, irritated by the cold and the childish questioning.

no. after the library.

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth huffed, pushing through the wooden door of the building and letting it slam behind her. The wind catches a carrier bag rolling past the library and sends it soaring into the air.

then you are lost too.

Elizabeth places her notepad, pen and highlighters on the table. It is quiet in the library, as libraries should be. She came to it to concentrate, as she knew there were too many opportunities to procrastinate back at the shared flat.

She tears a new sheet of paper from the pad and spreads her notes around her. They are neatly written and well organised, but she doesn’t know where to start. She is conscious of a woman behind her rifling through a box of damaged books on sale, which puts her off.

Quarter of an hour later, Elizabeth is sitting back at the table with a publishing textbook opened to a chapter on small business practice. She had hoped the thousand-page thick book would make her feel more studious, but it is having the opposite effect. All of the words mesh together into streams of useless jargon.

On the lower half of the next page, amidst a highlighted block of text under the header ‘Case Study’, is a colour photo. In it is a model-looking man dressed in a sharp black suit talking into a mobile phone. He is walking along a riverside embankment in what could be Florence, judging from the symmetrical, Brunelleschi-style architecture. Elizabeth scans the excerpt of text, a long blurb regarding the legalities of American serial rights, and finds no link to the adjoined picture. It is almost as if the author had included the out-of-place image of the professional merely to see if anyone would notice his presence.

Elizabeth does, and her mind wanders.

She drifts off to the banks of the Arno. The sun is hazy in the sky as the Summer’s afternoon slowly draws on, and for a few moments before it disappears briefly behind a river bridge, everything reflects a warm glow. She sits outside a bistro, idly sipping a large glass of fine amarone and listening to the foreign banter of the Italians around her. Although hats had never suited her, in her mind’s eye Elizabeth can see herself looking glamorous in a large cream fedora, long white dress and sunshades. Any passing men that also happen to be wearing hats tip them to her respectfully.

She fantasises about the man in the suit, happily talking away into his mobile and smiling widely. Did she find him incredibly attractive solely because of the suit, she wondered? Or was the mystery man from the textbook attractive in his own right, his own right, his own copyright, copyright and publishing history, legal rules and corporations and coursework due…

… in next Friday, Elizabeth thinks, opening her eyes and taking in the mass of notes sprawled across the table.

Fuck, she adds mentally, picking up a biro.

*****

She leaves the library. It is four o’clock, and already close to nightfall. When it arrives, this run-down part of the city will loosen its already weak grip on sense and order — the Winter months seem to be worse for bringing out the shadier sides of London after dark.

Elizabeth buttons up her long coat before making her way down the steps onto the street. She puts her hands into her pockets and feels the scarf she had stuffed in there earlier. Wrapping it tightly around her face and neck, she begins the short walk back home.

The wind rushes fiercely above the tall buildings on either side of the street, shaking antennas and rattling skylights on top of the three-floored buildings. It howls down at the people walking alone in the street, yet the air is perfectly still at ground level.

Elizabeth walks past a bar. She stops, contemplating going in. Looking into the windows, she sees that it is one of those painfully fake Irish bars; the type that plasters clovers and green posters on every available surface, the type that no Irish, no real Irish, would be seen dead in. There are only a few drunken deadbeats sitting by the bar (none of which are drinking Guinness), which prompts Elizabeth to reconsider. Drinking alone in a bar such as this will only invite unwanted conversation, and solitude is what she is really after.

Her head swimming with all of the tasks that face her when she arrives home, she rubs her eyes and continues down the street. Reaching the crossroads leading onto Edsworth Close, Elizabeth hears her name being called from above.

why.

“Why what?” Elizabeth replies to the wind.

why you.

A homeless man, the same one who was making the charcoal rubbing, sits down in an open doorway across the road. He produces a 35cl bottle of brandless vodka from his jacket. People pass him, indifferent.

“Look, you’re not making any sense,” Elizabeth retorts, irritated. The wind descends to street level and blows lightly around her. She is surprised to find that the breeze is warm.

why are you here. what is your purpose in this life.

She isn’t sure how to answer. The question is as old is the wind itself.

“Well,” she sighs, hesitating, “not everybody knows their purpose until they come across it. I’m one of those people. But there is a purpose for everyone, I’m sure of it.” She stops abruptly, almost doubting herself, and adds, “Not like, in a hippy sense, but it’s true that you can just… feel it. You have to keep searching.”

how.

“It’s kind of like… um, let’s say it’s kind of like a hammer,” She answers, not really sure how to recant her granddad’s anecdote or whether she could remember all of the finer details. “You know what a hammer is, right?”

yes, the wind spoke, excitedly. i know this thing. it smashes things, and puts nails in things, and dents things, and…

“Okay, yes! Good… let’s say it’s main purpose is for nails. Well, imagine a hammer lying in a toolbox. Not getting used, just sitting there. Obviously it doesn’t care, it just sits there, you know? ’Cause it doesn’t have a soul. But imagine if it did have a soul. No, not a soul… a self-consciousness.” She pauses, trying to remember the next part. The wind waits patiently. “He’s happy on the inside, this hammer, but he feels something missing,” she continues, part of her idly wondering why she subconsciously associated the hammer a masculine gender. “One day, someone starts using him. The user breaks down some branches with the hammer, and the hammer loves it. He feels excited by his usefulness, and wants to be used more, but it’s not enough for him. Something’s still missing. Are you following?”

yes, the wind replies, both calmly and intently.

“Okay. So over the next few days, the hammer gets used for all sorts of stuff. Bending a metal hubcab into shape, knocking some chair legs into place, stuff like that. He loves it all, and wants to bash stuff all the time, but there’s still something missing. Then, one day, he is used to hit a nail.” Elizabeth pauses for dramatic effect. The warm wind blows on the back of her neck, urging her to go on. “In that moment, everything makes sense. The hammer gets it. This is what he was made for all along, and although everything that went on before in his life was good, he knew that hitting nails was what he was born to do. It’s what was missing, what his little hammer soul was born to do all along.”

Elizabeth had become so into her recycled version of her Granddad’s maxim that she had forgotten what the wind’s original question was, and as such struggled to think if she had answered this question properly.

that is interesting, whispers the wind, almost silently. when will you hit your nail.

A smile breaks across her face, growing into a slight laugh. “Oh, you don’t get it, do you? I won’t know until I hit it. ”

She reaches the door to her building, already with the latch key in her hand, and lets herself in. Stepping on a growing pile of mail addressed to everyone in the complex, she reaches down and rifles through the envelopes, scanning the names on each letter and finding only one displaying her own. She clomps up to her flat, lets herself in with her latch key. Nobody is home.

Elizabeth walks into her shared living room and dumps her bag and coat onto the couch. The answer phone is blinking, telling her there are three messages waiting. One is from her older brother, what she guesses is a short and generic ‘how are you?’ message although she can’t hear as the traffic noise in background completely drowns him out. The next message is for her flatmate, followed by one left by Janice, Elizabeth’s supervisor at the temping agency.

“This is a message for… hnnnn… Elizabeth,” her voice whines, a nasal twang added with the gravel of a forty-year smoking habit. As the message plays, Elizabeth can see the contrite woman sitting upright at her desk, mutton dressed as lamb, staring at her nails. “Hnnnn, give me a call back. Got a phone-monkey assignment for tomorrow, desk in Camden. You’re top of the pile.” No proper sign-off, just the click of the receiver.

She had planned to pour one anyway, but Janice’s chalk-board voice enforces her decision to pour a glass of red.

For the rest of the evening, the wind howls against the windows of Elizabeth’s flat.

Eight Twenty-Five

She gets off at her stop. It just so happens to be his stop too. Both figuratively and literally.

The crazy guy had followed her off, still repeating the same sentence over and over. What is he saying? Something that sounds like ‘secrets are confidential’, followed by more mumbling.

She waits on the platform to change trains. There are a few people milling on the platform. One person is trying to fold her broadsheet and is doing a lousy job of it. Elizabeth watches her for a while before turning her attention back to the man. He is rocking backwards and forwards, shifting his weight between the ball and the heel of his foot. He’s stopped chanting his weird mantra to himself.

“I’m so tired!” He half-yawns, half-yells, arms outstretched. He is staring straight at Elizabeth… God, he has really creepy eyes. She is sure his right one is made of glass, making her feel even more uncomfortable. She hears the next train racing up the tunnel towards the platform as she stares back at crazy man, never one to break a stare with a stranger. She isn’t that timid a person, she’d stare back at him for the rest of the afternoon if she had to…

… until it suddenly occurs to her what he is about to do. She turns around quickly and covers her eyes just as he falls backwards. There is a deafening bang quickly followed by someone screaming. Joining in with the chorus is the piercing squeal of the train’s brakes. Elizabeth doesn’t scream, just says “fuck” really loudly. She is kind of surprised he did it, but on reflection really should have seen it coming.

Elizabeth leaves the platform and rides the escalator up to the street, deciding that the hysteria down there would be too much to cope with. As it is obvious she isn’t going anywhere fast on the tube, she calls the agency.

She speaks to a new receptionist, Cathy, (there’s always a Cathy in these types of places, Elizabeth muses) and asks to be put through to Janice. The phone clicks three times.

“Malcolme and Drummer Temping Agency.”

No ‘Good morning’, no ‘how can I help?’

“Hiya, is that Janice?” she asks redundantly, knowing that it is.

“Hnnnn, yes. Good morning, Suzie. Hello.” Janice fires back, somehow pronouncing ‘hello’ like it was a swear word. She has a strange talent at making anything, no matter how innocuous, sound like an insult.

“Yeah, hi. It’s Elixabeth, actually. Listen, I need the number for that new placement. I wrote it down when you gave it to me last night but I forgot to bring it out with me.” Elizabeth waits but is greeted with pure silence, making her feel uncomfortable enough to continue babbling, “I’m going to have to call them and tell them I can’t make it for nine. Some crazy guy just threw himself in front of my train, so I’m going to be a bit late.”

“Hnnnn, you’re going to be a bit late, or are a bit late?” Janice replies, and Elizabeth can’t help but imagine her smirking to herself.

“I… sorry? What do you mean?”

“You do know that you were, hnnnn, supposed to be there at eight, yes?”

Elizabeth looks at the cheap watch she’s worn since she was fourteen. Eight thirty-five. She already knew this before looking, and replays the conversation from last night in her head.

“No, wait. You told me I had to be there at nine.”

“Hnnnn, no.”

Again, silence.

“Wait, I distinctly remember telling you…” Elizabeth starts, momentarily distracted by an advert on the side of a passing bus, “…I mean, you telling me that I was to arrive at nine.”

“Hnnnn, no.” Janice says again, then leaves her hanging once more. Jesus, what is with this woman?

“Anyway,” Elizabeth goes on, trying a new tact, “you called me up at seven o’clock last night. Seven o’clock. My contract says you have to give me twenty-four hours’ notice before an assignment.”

“Hnnnn, no. You accepted the assignment either way, so it’s your, hnnnn, responsibility to arrive at work on time.”

She is actually right on that one. Elizabeth tries again.

“Hang on, where you even listening to me? I just saw a guy get splattered by a train, for Christ’s sake. I’ve just seen someone die,” which isn’t really true, she thinks. She didn’t actually see the guy go down, but that’s immaterial. “You’re telling me that’s not a good enough reason to be late for work?”

There is a pause on the line. She’s audibly thinking, Elizabeth notes, not about whether I am right or not, but about how she can portray herself as more right.

“You were still late before that happened,” Janice eventually replies. “Hnnnn, you should have called the company before that.”

Elizabeth throws the arm not holding the phone up in despair, nearly hitting the newspaper seller next to her. She apologises to him with the phone still to her ear. I hope to God that Janice doesn’t think I was apologising to her.

“Hnnnn, why didn’t you call them when you knew you were going to be late?”

Elizabeth is so frustrated she growls, actually growls, into the phone. “For one thing, you told me I was supposed to be starting at nine, not eight. Also, you didn’t even give me the number!”

“Yes, I did.” Janice answers in her nasal voice. “Hnnnn, you told me a minute ago you wrote it down last night.”

Elizabeth wants to punch the nearest person, which happens to be the newspaper guy. “Look,” she spits into the receiver, “You told me to get there for nine. I was on schedule for nine, but someone committed suicide right in front of me and now the trains are delayed. All I wanted to know is the…” she nearly says ‘fucking’, but stops herself, “… sodding number for the company, so I can call them and tell them that I’m running late. It’s not my fault I’m late. In fact, I shouldn’t be going to work at all after the shock of seeing some bloke swan dive into a speeding train.”

The phoneline returns once again to a fuzzy quiet, which makes her feel edgy. Janice finally speaks.

“I’m obliged to tell you that I’m making a file note of your time keeping. Is there anything else you’d like to add, hnnnn, Elizabeth?”

She lets out a huge, angry sigh, and it feels like she’d been holding her breath for years.

“Yes. Actually Janice, there is something I’d like to add to that.”

“Yes?”

“Fuck you.”

Elizabeth hangs up, and kisses all chances of paying rent on time goodbye.

why are you crying. A voice of a thousand years whispers softly.

“I’m not crying,” Elizabeth sniffs, hurrying down the street with her arms crossed. “I’m just… oh God, it’s all turned to shit,” she says, and the tears come.

The wind falls quiet, and lightly blows warm air on her cheeks in an effort to dry them. She tries to smile, but more sobs come. “Thankg gyoo,” she says, blowing into a tissue.

you are welcome.

Elizabeth stares up at the bright grey canopy of clouds, the sudden contrast prickling her eyes but stopping the tears. “How is your day going?” she manages.

A torrent of wind blows up the street from behind her, neither warm nor cold, just… wind.

i do not have days. how is yours.

“Ugh… don’t,” Elizabeth replies, fastening the top button of her coat. “It feels like my life is falling apart. I can’t see how it can get worse than this.”

that was how the man on the platform felt.

This makes her stop.

“I’m sorry, Vidian. You’re right. Here’s me moaning about how bad I’ve got it when some guy felt so shitty he decided to smear himself across the Northern line. But… how did you know about him?”

The wind darts around her before catching hold of a McDonald’s wrapper, throwing it under an oncoming bus. The wrapper emerges from the rear and spirals up into the air.

i am always there. i lead the metal-trains. or they push me. i do not know which.

Elizabeth carries on walking, swerving around an old man pushing a bicycle. Of course, she thinks. The wind that rides the underground tunnels… warm, stale gusts, the faint smell of oil and rubber.

“I feel bad for him,” she sighs. “I figured he was just an insane hobo, but who knows what his story is. Or was. Whether he left behind a family, whether anyone cares…”

The wind grows from a lights breeze to a gust so intense it nearly knocks over a man carrying an advertising board. The man did not die.

“Wait, he didn’t die? But that train was going really fast, I mean, really fast, and… and, I heard the bang as he slammed off the…”

i heard the men in green talking afterwards.

The wind stops. As if it won’t continue without prompting, Elizabeth urges it tell her more.

the man broke nearly every bone on his right side but landed away from the track. almost certainly paralysed for life. but he will live.

“Do you see that a lot?”

what.

“People surviving… er, fights with trains,” Elizabeth replies.

The wind contemplates this.

yes. quite often.

She reaches the steps to her apartment building. Touching the latch key in her pocket, she thinks about how she is going to pay the rent, and it doesn’t seem to matter quite so much anymore.

“That’s… comforting. Thank you.”

If it is possible for the wind to sigh, it does.

you are welcome.

Five-Thirty

Elizabeth hits replay on the only message on the answering machine for the third time.

“Hi, hoping to leave a message for Liz, or is it Elizabeth? I can’t remember which you prefer…. sorry, hahah, I’m just babbling, ignore me! Anyway, it’s Cathy calling from Random House, don’t know if you remember me… oh sorry, listen to me. Anyway, my boss wanted you to call us back, says he has something of interest he wants to ask you. Could you give him a call? The number’s oh-two-oh…”

Of course, Elizabeth can’t place Cathy the Receptionist or her chirpy phone voice. But the message clearly related to one thing, and that was her month-long agency placement at the London arm of the world’s largest publishing house four months prior.

Two days before Christmas

“… So, basically, it means I’ll probably make rent this month.”

what is rent.

She watches as the breeze makes patterns in the grass of Clissold Park. The air is freezing, a special kind of biting cold that only ever happens just before Christmas, almost as if the winter is making a final declaration of its power before the year ends. “It’s kind of… um… rent is kind of like a charge for living? It only really applies to adults. If you’re not rich enough to pay monthly instalments on owning your own life, that is.”

so rent is just like paying only the interest on living.

“Hah, yes! Very good. You clearly hang around humans too much.”

The sun is setting across the city. Any minute now the sky will turn brilliantly pink and the clouds fairy tale, only for a short while, before rapidly sinking into nightfall. The wind rustles the trees, almost as if in anticipation. Elizabeth sits on a bench with a takeaway coffee clasped between her hands. She watches the people crossing the park. Dog walkers, parents with children bundled in impossibly thick coats, joggers pretending not to notice the cold. None of them pay any attention to the wind. None of them know it is listening.

why do humans always hurry.

She smiles.

“Because if we stop moving, we have to think.”

The breeze circles the bench, lifting the loose strands of her hair.

thinking is good.

“It depends what you’re thinking about.”

For a while neither of them says anything. The silence between Elizabeth and Vidian has never been awkward. If anything, it is comfortable. Familiar. The sort of silence that only exists between old friends.

“So…” she says eventually, “do you know why Random House want me back?”

no.

“I was only there for a month. I mostly answered phones and carried manuscripts around the building. Hardly glamorous.”

The wind toys with the lid of her coffee cup.

perhaps you did something important without knowing.

Elizabeth laughs.

“That sounds annoyingly mystical.”

many important things are done by people who think they are unimportant.

She rolls her eyes.

“You’ve definitely been spending too much time around humans.”

The laughter fades almost as quickly as it came. Her thoughts drift back to Janice, to the phone call, to the file note that probably now sat somewhere with her name on it.

“I’ve never been fired before.”

The wind moves through the bare branches above them, producing a sound like distant applause.

you were not fired.

“No… but I might as well have been.”

then you will find another path.

She stares into her coffee.

“Easy for you to say. You’re the wind.”

The reply takes longer than usual.

there are storms that never find where they belong.

Elizabeth looks up.

For the first time since she met Vidian, she wonders if loneliness isn’t something unique to people.

She changes the subject.

“So what actually are you?”

The branches sway.

i have been called many things.

“Such as?”

breath. messenger. spirit. weather. nuisance.

That last one makes her laugh.

“Nuisance?”

farmers.

She laughs properly this time, loud enough that a passing couple glance over at her before quickly looking away.

“I suppose that makes sense.”

The last of the sunlight slips below the rooftops. The brilliant pink fades into purple, then blue. Elizabeth stands, throwing her empty coffee cup into a nearby bin.

“I should probably head home.”

yes.

“You’ll still be here?”

The answer comes immediately.

i am always here.

She nods.

“I know.”

I will ask another question. before you go.

Elizabeth chews her lip, glancing around at the ancient pigeon shit staining every inch of the park bench. “Vidian,” she whispers, “you ask too many questions.”

please.

She looks out across the park and the city below, ethereal in the half-light of dusk. Turning her plastic Honda key-ring over and over in her pocket (Where on Earth did I get this? She wonders. I’ve had it for as long as I can remember, I don’t even have a car) she shrugs.

“Go on, then.”

are you going to hit your nail.

“I don’t know. It’s probably only an interview. It only came about because… I don’t know, they presumably liked my photocopying and tea-making skills? That, and because someone came across my agency CV and noticed that I’m graduating in publishing next year. We’ll see, I mean it’ll be good pay for an entry level gig, I’ll be putting my degree to good use, and at the very least I’ll be getting paid to do something I…”

what is love.

Elizabeth reels. What kind of a question is that?

“What is… shit, I don’t know?” Elizabeth cries out at nobody. “People have been asking that forever!”

yes.

She inhales deeply, and looks around. What does she have to offer the voice of the wind? What does it mean to love, and to be loved in return? Is that even what Vidian is asking?

“Listen,” she speaks into her scarf, quietly, and the wind obediently falls still. “There’s this quote I learned in first year. It’s always attributed to Germaine Greer, but it’s not hers. It came from Erica Jong, the American novelist. Anyway, I think she hit it right when she said…”

She furrows her brow, trying to remember it right… I’ve spent ages committing so many quotes to memory, why do they always disappear when I need them?

The wind plays at the grass by her feet, waiting for her to go on. It comes to her, every single word popping into her mind as solid as crystal.

“… Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, risking everything for.”

The wind rises to her cheeks. but why is it worth…

“I haven’t finished!” Elizabeth snaps. “You ask so many questions, but I wonder if you really do ever listen to the answers!”

The wind rises now, an angry breeze trying to clutch at a discarded Vanity Fair magazine sitting atop the pile of garbage in an open bin next to the bench. The cold blast bites at Elizabeth’s face as it grows angrier, screaming through the trees and scattering huge clusters of dead leaves across the slopes and rises of the park. It grabs at her mother’s scarf, threatening to tear it off and carry it for miles. Elizabeth rises, and yells. The gusts blast all around her, deafening in their roars, drowning out her screaming against them:

“… Because the trouble is, if you don’t risk everything for love, you risk even more!”

The sky washes out and darkens suddenly, and just as the contrast between what is above and what is below London’s horizon cannot possibly become any duller, just as the darkness reaches the peak of its promised loneliness….

… The blissful, almost cartoon-ish sunset breaks through, full of candy floss clouds suspended against a perfect deep navy background. The wind is still and respectful and the effects of light do all the talking as Elizabeth basks in the beauty of the urban sprawl, the utter serenity of all the concrete ugliness stretched out for miles before her, the knowledge that it’ll be okay, despite everything suggesting otherwise, the tiny warmth inside warding away the bitter physical coldness, the overwhelming silence battling against the one small voice that says…

… thank you.

And as Elizabeth watches the moment fade, as the clouds turn from baby pink to violet to uncaring nightshade, as the street lamps flicker on in the city below, she sees the wind playing in the grass and trees in the park and breaks into a smile so real she can’t remember the last time she was this happy.

“…You’re welcome.”