We waited for a week. To begin with. It went by pretty quickly! We had beef stroganoff on Tuesday and leftovers for the next couple of days. And went for nice runs. And had pints at the pub on Friday. And then it wasn’t ready yet, but it was pretty close, so we waited another week.

The next week we went for walks in the park and watched spring bloom. Your mum came to visit, and on Friday we went dancing. And then it wasn’t ready yet, but it was pretty close, so we waited another week.

The next week we were tired. But it was pretty close. I promised. You promised too. I made a leek pie and you painted a picture of me making it. It wasn’t a very good picture, but it’s nice to try new things! And on Friday we went to the cinema. And then… it wasn’t ready yet. And we wondered if maybe it wasn’t that close at all. But we’d come this far. So we waited another week.

A man in a tall white coat is tucking into a pretzel on a busy street corner. The man is not tall. The coat is. The man is not tall but his coat is tall, and now he has crumbs and salt from the pretzel all over his face. And all over the coat too.

You want to go over there and dust the crumbs and salt from his coat. You want to tell him, hey sir, careful with those crumbs! That’s a white coat! But obviously you don’t do that. Instead you wonder why he’s wearing such a tall coat. It’s nearly touching the floor. Maybe he used to be taller? Maybe it’s just really hard these days, to find a coat that fits. Enjoy your pretzel, street corner man.

I’d like to climb inside your stocking and just sit there for a little while as you carry me around. I’d have to make myself really small, of course. Which is hard when I’m around you because you make me feel ten feet tall. And you’re five feet exactly. Which is less. But then if I were small enough to fit into your stocking, I’d probably find it hard to get in. I could ask you! I suppose! But I don’t want to be a burden. So… I think maybe I’d suggest we go for a lovely walk, in Hampstead Heath. To that nice spot with the big tree with leaves of three different colours, where the afternoon light makes it look like a Rowntrees Fruit Pastille ice lolly. And I’d walk us through some spikey undergrowth and, oh no! oh dear, look darling I’ve laddered my tights. But it’s okay because a ladder is just what I wanted. So then I’d shrink myself down, and climb up that little ladder, and get in and nuzzle myself against your lower leg, and you’d laugh about it and carry me home.

The fumes from her nail varnish wrestled with the dull fug of stale battered cod. The blue glow from the fly zapper coloured Megan, draped across the salty countertop, with streaks of ultra violet, as she painted her fingertips some unidentifiable hue.

It’s getting dark early at the moment. It’s that time of year. Getting-dark-early time.

The sky is pretty clear and surprisingly blue. It’ll be black in about 45 minutes. Surprisingly blue and artfully faded into a kind of dusty cyan, like the background of a low-budget powerpoint presentation. There are a few clouds. They’re black on one side of the sky and white on the other.

Sarah is walking to the shops. She wants to buy eggs. She knows there’s an egg shortage. The chickens are on strike. Everyone’s on strike. No one will be upset if she comes back with nothing. They’ll get it. “Sorry everyone, the chickens are on strike,” she’ll say. “Not to worry. They ought to be better paid,” Nanna will respond.

Together we could go anywhere. If we wanted to. We could go to Paris and eat a croissant, or two. Or Rome, to lie on the floor of the Cistine chapel and look at the nice ceiling. We’d probably get in trouble with the guards, but, it might be fun to spend the night in an Italian jail with you. I’m sure if we wanted to we could go to the moon. And we could sit in the sea of tranquility and eat sandwiches. It would be expensive, probably. I’d wash dishes all year and save up if we decided it was something we really wanted to do. We could laugh at all the billionaires across the crater in their fancy shoes. They wouldn’t be having as much fun as us. Or we could just go to Tesco, hold hands in the bread aisle. And, well, buy some bread.

It’s summer but it’s not warm. Greta Thunberg is wearing a lilac scarf and ear muffs. Yes ear muffs. She’s at the newsstand buying a newspaper. She doesn’t have a smartphone. She’s got a Phillips Savvy. But she still wants to know what’s going on. She’s 38 and her hands are freezing. The newsagent recognises her and is not polite. “Thank you,” smiles Greta Thunberg. The newsagent smiles with his mouth but not his eyes. Definitely not his eyes. He preferred ice creams and panic to mittens and misery. Panic gave you something to do. Gave Greta something to do, too, to be honest. She takes her paper and brings it to a park bench. There’s a pigeon standing on the seat. “Excuse me may I sit,” says Greta. And the pigeon smiles with her mouth but not her eyes, and says, “No.”

A dream slips off your face and onto the floor and crumples in a messy shiny pile. You open your eyes slowly but they’re covered in eye mask. So all you can see is eye mask. And hardly even that, because your eyes are glued shut by eye goo and little crusty bits. If you were a soup, these might be the croutons. The croutons are everyone’s favourite bit, aren’t they? What kind of soup would I be, you ask yourself. Carrot and coriander? Or some kind of broth? Like, with chunky bits of root vegetable and stringy meat. Maybe a goulash. Is a goulash a soup? Or a stew? What’s the difference? You peel the mask from your face and pick the flakes from your eyes, and give them a little taste. So good, you think to yourself. And you groggily swing your legs around to the side of the bed, and slip slightly on the puddle left by the rippled satin of your melting dream, but you keep your footing, and you go and get a coffee.

Elle poured milk directly into her stomach. Via her oesophagus. Gulp gulp gulp said her oesophagus, as it pumped cold semi skimmed milk from Elle’s mouth over her tongue and under her teeth into her hot, sloshy bag of sick.

The fridge door hung open pathetically. Yearning. Have you no self respect Elle said. With her mind. She said it with her mind. But the fridge door didn’t respond. Maybe it couldn’t hear her? so she said it out loud. “Have you no self respect?” she said, quietly, firmly, bitterly. And the fridge door just stayed there, open, as if to say, take it, take it all. It’s all for you. So no. The answer was no. No self respect. So she took out all the ham and all the cheese, and all the jars of jam and mayonnaise and pickles, and she shoved those down too. And the fridge shivered with delight at its own servitude.

There’s just about enough of an orange glow reflecting from the clouds above to make out the walls of the corridors. The light is silent and still and the air is calm. She treads gently over dust and rocks and broken glass, slowly so as to allow enough photons to enter her eyes for her to put together a little map in her mind of the maze. She sees a right turn, and, carefully, she takes it.