The doors to the supermarket had been tricky at best for a few years, and no one could afford to replace them, least of all these days. One particularly unfortunate week they were stuck open for a total of three days before anyone could get them working again. It just so happened that this was the week of the great fog, which seized its chance and snuck through to languish and bathe among the aisles, and in the absence of any air conditioning to speak of, remained there several days after they’d managed to fix the doors. Visibility was about two metres in the biscuit aisle, and it wasn’t uncommon to come across a confused, elderly villager who’d got stuck looking for pickles and had been lost for several hours.

This year winter arrived on a Wednesday. Suddenly and, though technically invited, in a brusk and careless manner that showed a certain lack of respect. Tuesday had been mild, with wise and weary trees nodding respectfully in the sepia afternoon light as Carl wandered slowly home, enjoying the sort of weather that’s finally put its party days behind it and figured out what it really wants in life. A red squirrel chirped good evening, as a little family of redwings packed up their bags for their annual journey. And then Wednesday woke up and took a big, cold, windy wet shit over everything. Screw you Wednesday.

The beast from the wooden box wrapped its luminescent legs around her stony face, just about cradling her head enough to prevent it from tumbling from the worn corduroy headrest and onto the floor. It snaked its sneaky tendrils through her pupils, down her optic nerves, and in through her ear canals, and round and round in a spiral, injecting its juices straight to her brain. A cigarette puppeteered her arm to her face and coughed onto her tongue.

Rachel poked her head through the hatch. “Mum I’m going out.”

“Mm, thank you.” said Mum.

“What? I said I’m going out.”

“Mmm in the fridge love.”

And so Rachel grabbed her bag, whose chain handle clinked and clacked against the kitchen countertop, and she went out.

We sidle across the dark beams of the lock onto the little island in the middle of the canal. You reach out your hand to mine to help me down. Thanks. It’s 4am and the clouds are just beginning to ripen with a pinkish light from the east. We shuffle to the end of the island and down the stone steps. There’s an enamel plaque of a rabbit with no ears, holding a grenade. I drop your heavy rucksack to the dirty floor, just a few inches above the sticky canal water. We wait as the dinghy inflates, and then, quietly, load it up with all our things and step aboard. It’s a six metre journey to the bridge. It almost doesn’t seem worth it. Beneath the southern arch, as promised, the door. You pull a long, delicate black key from your overalls. Just you wait.

Pete shuffled along the aisles of Sainsbury’s at leisure. He was ten minutes early. He had also realised he’d forgotten his deodorant and had already begun to sweat in the overheated tube tunnel. He grabbed a stick of Lynx Africa and a packet of Wrigley’s Extra Ice White. He ran his fingers along the wares of the biscuit aisle. No intention to buy. Just looking at the Marylands. He reached the end of the section and swung round to the self-checkouts, assisted by the gravity slingshot of a stack of two litre soda waterbottles and special-offer Tangfastics. And there, by the bagging area, was David. Ten minutes early. “Hi.”

A crumb clung to his lip. I opened my mouth and drew breath to tell him, but then I stopped myself. What, he asked. Nothing, I replied.

So he carried on talking about Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, and why she was the most misunderstood “it” girl. But all I could think about was that little chunk of Bakewell tart hanging from his snogger. He paused, what are you looking at? I said, nothing, and he looked over his left shoulder and scrunched his brow with a confused disdain. Well… and then I picked up his affogato and rinsed his face with it. And the crumb was gone. And I could finally rest.

Sweden stepped carefully backwards toward the sun. She eyed the dark grey tapestry of bricks beneath her flip flops.

Impractical shoes, she said to herself. But they made her feel like it was summer, even though it was only the fourteenth of April. Aphex Twin Day, her Dad used to say. She would have preferred a happy birthday.

Earlier in Starbucks, Jerry, the barista, according to his name tag, had said to her, a macchiato for Sweden! I’ll be here all day! It wasn’t funny. She wished she’d been called Laura. Or Hitler. Something easy.

Her shadow spilled out far in front of her. Her liquid copilots, five cosmopolitans, were creative with her trajectory. She had realised, with great excitement, that she wouldn’t bump into anything if she couldn’t see its shadow. She was right. And then she fell into the canal.

Robert waited fifteen minutes after she’d left before getting up out of bed, sliding on a green and white striped t-shirt and some grey dungarees, putting on his socks and shoes, tying his laces with bunny ears, laying out a couple of still-warm sausages and a bowl of chilled water for the dogs and a tin of tuna for Rachel, combing his hair to the left hand side, checking it in the mirror, turning on the gas, kneeling down, laying a satin cushion onto the grate, manoeuvring his head inside the oven, and closing his eyes.

Three chunky, grubby, streetlit men tossed limp hessian sacks between themselves in a chain, one to the other, until the last, the grubbiest and least streetlit, slid each one neatly onto the back of a worn-out pickup truck. The first man, “Steve!” he had been called, who was the chunkiest but the least grubby, dragged each off a disordered pile on the floor of the dock, for which he had to lean down and each time displayed the shiny crack of his buttocks. He was not using his knees to bend, which was of course very bad for his back, as Slim Tim, the chunkiest but only mildly grubby man in the middle, would tell him later in life, when it was already too late.

Hot wet rain slithers up between your toes from the puddles below. The balls of your grit-speckled feet tickle the tarmac. You rub them on the ground for temporary relief. Only temporary.

Ten stilleto heels click-clack towards you. The fleshy lumpy towers held high above them cackle and gurn, their skin sparkling with summer sweat and sequins. You feel underdressed, in your blue M&S dressing gown with the sleeves rolled up. But they can’t see you. You slip to the side of the alley so that they can stumble past. You catch a faint whiff of something. You’re close.