Twenty floors up, sitting in an armchair, looking through the apartment window at the city outside.

It is dusk, and there is a thunderstorm. Lashing rain. Droplets streak diagonally across the glass, catching one another and running together. Every couple of minutes a burst of sheet lightning picks out the sharp edges of buildings, skyscrapers, office blocks, just for a second, before they disappear once again into the inky darkness, land running into sky, both black.

Below me I can see a car winding its way through the streets, the splayed V of its headlights casting a dome. It passes and two red eyes fade away. In the buildings there are squares of white and amber, sometimes whole floors illuminated. I see a silhouette of a person in one of them and I wonder if they see me, too, and all the while the city braces against the storm.

A dive bar at dusk. I don’t know the place but I know it has a soft name which rolls off the tongue like whiskey: Nashville, Memphis, Alabama.

Wood-panelled walls, peppered in curiosities. Nothing matches, but that’s what makes it work: a small neon sign, a deer skull, faded photographs of people long gone who loved this place and whom this place loved. They grin at the camera.

Dim lighting. Old men with long grey beards and leather Stetsons. A bottle of cold beer on the bar, the white foam lacing the inside of the green glass, the label wet and peeling with condensation.

Music in the background: country or blues. I can’t make out the words. A murmur of conversation, punctuated by laughter. It feels like home. In the background somebody pots an eight ball.

Lying on my back in a pine forest. The trees rise into the white morning sky like sentinels watching over me, trunks perfectly straight. The cool air, scented by their needles.

There was a storm overnight. Around me green moss clings to stone and bark, sodden like wet hair. Drops of water cling to the curved leaves of fern and bracken, precarious and fragile. A small beetle passes, turning this way and that, antenna working.

There is no sound: even the birds are silent, up in the branches, preening their soaked feathers and shaking rainwater from their tiny bodies, preparing for a new day.

On top of a mountain. A cairn marks the summit, each stone placed here by a traveller before us. We search for one of our own and place it on the pile. For no reason other than it feels right, we make a wish.

Up here we are above the clouds. A thick white blanket all around us and we stand on an outcrop of stone, like castaways on a tiny island.

It feels like we have crossed into another world, passed through the veil between realms, a little closer to heaven. What we cannot see does not exist. The sky is an azure blue. No sound, save for our laboured breaths.

Our stories go from event to event, from drama to drama, each chapter carrying the story forward.

But I am fascinated by the scene left behind. These worlds and environments we create do not die once the page has been turned, and I am often enchanted by what is left once the drama is over. The silence, the setting, the mess.

And so, blasphemously, I have turned to AI to generate images of what is left behind once scenes in my novel, Vanilla, are over and the story has moved on. Here are just a few.

From 29. the sickening and deafening crunch of metal:

It was then that his car erupted into flames behind him and people shrieked and backed away and the fire licked the inside of the vehicle and the fingers of it reached out of the windows and he knew what he had to do but was already consumed with guilt and on his hands and knees he looked up and he saw the jerk of the motorcyclist’s body as someone carried out chest compressions and nearby a young woman stood with her hands over her mouth and when she glanced at him he inhabited her and once he had he could hear the rhythmic grunts of the gentleman who attempted to resuscitate the body on the cold ground.

From 56. they were furious and theirs was the power:

He looked around and he saw her, standing at a safe distance but unmistakable even through the rising smoke which coasted on the breeze and she looked at him and no one else and she was smiling. He got down and picked his way through the swarm of bodies towards her and stepped over those who lay motionless on the cold ground and stood in front of her and Dr Royce smiled still and after a few seconds he smiled too and they said nothing. Behind him in the centre of the square a group of rioters looped rope around the statue and pulled as one and it rocked and tilted and toppled to the ground where the head broke away and an arm shattered and the knees cracked open.

From 46. a gutter of great sinfulness:

He made his way down the hallway, inching past slumped bodies propped up against the walls and people holding plastic cups of potent drink and calling to each other fruitlessly over the music. He walked past an open bedroom door and looked inside to see at least two bodies writhing on the mattress and throughout the apartment all the lights were off and the only illumination was from the city outside and this was a cesspit, a den of iniquity, a gutter of great sinfulness, where the worst of humanity was grotesquely exposed for all to see and he continued down the hallway.

From 51. scribbled writings from a hand long gone:

The place was indeed abandoned: sunlight barely forced its way through the green algae which plastered the skylights, casting a dull glow over large racks still stacked with lengths of timber, sawn and shaped and covered in a thin layer of dust. White light was cast through the open doors and illuminated a trapezoid onto the concrete floor where lay wood shavings and screws and a few tools. The building smelled of chemicals and sawdust and mould and great industrial lathes and woodworking machinery stood silently in the gloom. To his right a metal staircase rose to a mezzanine which held two offices with large windows which looked out onto the warehouse floor and the doors were unlocked and his old curiosities returned and he leafed through trays of receipts and invoices and brittle paperwork.

This is the sixth heatwave this summer. Record temperatures reached every day, it seems. As we trudge through the barren field where grass has dried to straw our footsteps kick up small clouds of dust, no moisture in the soil, like walking on dull grey sand. Flies, startled by our passing, burst from the dung where they feed and scatter in short circles before landing again.

A cabbage white butterfly flits by, sunlight passing through parchment wings.

We walk along a shallow valley which tracks through a large barren field, spread out either side of us like the pages of an open book. The ground is parched, hot, the grass yellow. A depression in the earth marks where a pond once was, the dry bed now criss-crossed with thick cracks and fissures.

A flock of jackdaws passes overhead, cawing. Blue tits sing, hidden in the trees. A pheasant struts past, plumage of red and green, like royalty.

As we walk past a churchyard we talk about where we would like our ashes to be scattered when we’re gone. Gravestones stand hot and crooked, casting short shadows; the steeple bakes in the sun against a blue sky.

An abandoned farm trailer lies tilted in a hedgerow, the iron rusted and brittle, the tyres flat.

We pass an empty school playground, painted in colourful lines, hopscotch and chalk. It is the summer holidays and all is quiet. Artwork hangs in the windows, bleached in the sunlight.

Shrivelled daisies crunch beneath the soles of our boots. Beneath the ground their roots spread like dry hair, searching for any hint of moisture. The land, desperate for rain.

You’d have been about five years old at the time. Long golden brown hair, a cheeky smile. My daughter. The thought of you lifting your pillow every night and picking up my photograph with your little finger and thumb breaks my heart.

Your brother is here, too. He has just told me that he had a photograph of me and him stuck to the side of his bunk bed so he could see it every morning. He’d have been seven; smiling eyes, spiky hair, dancing to Michael Jackson.

Now, nine years later, we’re on our way to Somerset for a week, and you both laugh at me when I rest my panini back on the plate, unbitten.

The next day we go to the theme park. Your brother and I go on all the rides, weightless stomachs lurching as we spin and swing. You are stubborn, refusing to go on anything which looks remotely scary, but as the sun passes overhead your confidence grows and in the end you’re next to me, gripping onto the bar with white knuckles, staring at your feet.

After we get off I ask if you enjoyed it. You say no, but I catch a flicker of a smile.

The beach. The tired sun is almost at the horizon; I try to watch it set but end up bleaching white circles into my retinas and have to blink them away. The cool sea breeze comes in off the Atlantic. The sky is turning a dusty blue.

We find our names, carved into the wet sand the evening before. The tide has not come in far enough to erase them.

Seagulls laugh overhead; a half-moon looks on, face beaming. You throw a ball to each other and play-fight in the sand, my son and daughter. The sun slips gently below the horizon, the last gasps of orange in the clouds. I hope you’re both okay now. You seem like you are.

Just a quiet closing of the laptop lid, fingertips resting. It felt like getting in a car in a noisy city and slamming the door shut.

The next few weeks brought the editing, the proofreading, the little tweaks here and there, scrolling back and forth from page to page to check that the storylines thread correctly.

And then the queries to agents, the polite rejections, the reluctant realisation that silence from the others meant no.

And so, in April last year, I joined Substack and posted a chapter a week, every Monday morning. It took three hours to schedule them all.

Yesterday I published the epilogue, and now the car door has shut again.

I’m not sure what’s next. A handful of wonderful people who have followed ‘Vanilla’ from the beginning (you know who you are, and thank you) have enquired about a sequel.

Maybe. Until then, I’ll use my Substack to post my occasional thoughts, nostalgic views of identity and place.

Meanwhile, ‘Vanilla’ is now out in the world. If you read some of it, even a few sentences, I hope you enjoyed it.

One or two people had seen her fall, had caught a glimpse of her face as she plummeted to the ground: expressionless, almost accepting. A crowd began to gather around the car; some began to film on their phones. Others, realising they would be late for work, turned and walked on.

On the roof of the building Professor Royce hung over the ledge and looked in horror at the scene below and even though he wanted to scream any sound simply froze in his throat. Through the rain which fell around him and disappeared into the distance below he could see the twisted body of his wife nestled in the car roof and he turned and ran to the stairwell.

As panic and curiosity and intrigue rose around her the young woman looked at the scene passively, the faintest hint of a smile crossing her lips. She reached behind her ears and lifted her hood as people flocked about, eager and curious to catch a glimpse of the morbid sight and if any of them noticed the beautiful blue colour of her eyes then they did not mention it.

She took the opportunity to slip into the background and turned and walked down the street and within a few seconds she had disappeared, swallowed by the crowds, the people huddled beneath umbrellas hurrying in their own worlds amidst concrete and glass, brick and stone, the yawns and stretches of a city awakening to a new day.

He had worked late at the museum the previous night, preparing for a new exhibition opening the following week; she had stayed up as long as she could, sipping wine and looking out of their apartment window as the city outside darkened and her own reflection grew stronger, but had eventually taken a bath and settled into bed and fallen asleep before he arrived home.

He was now clearly attempting an apology, and she was open to it, and she felt his hand glide down her arm and onto her hip and she reached a hand behind her and ran her fingers through his hair and grasped it in a fist, and she felt his breath on her neck and heard a soft moan emanate from his lips as his hand swept over her hip and onto her thigh where it found the hem of her nightdress and slipped beneath it and her whole body flared in anticipation as skin touched skin.

He rode the thin material up and they made love in the darkness. He must have felt guilty; it was rough, deep, primal, and it had not been this way for many years and when he had finished she turned contentedly onto her back and closed her eyes and rested an arm on the pillow behind her head and sighed in satisfaction.

“If that was an apology for coming home late last night,” she muttered sleepily, “then apology accepted.”

He laughed softly and propped himself up on one elbow, resting his free hand on her stomach. “You’re welcome, Doctor,” he said, and his voice was that of her husband but the tone, the intonation, the inflection, was not and all at once every sense in her body switched into alarm and the neurons within her brain fired and flared and her eyes snapped open and she switched on her bedside lamp and Professor Henry Royce lay beside her in a t-shirt and his underwear and his eyes were a frosty blue and she screamed and burst out of the bed.

“What the fuck?!”

He did not move but merely smiled and it was a grimace, a wide leer, and she had never seen this expression on her husband’s face before and it only added to the horror of it all. She snatched a dressing gown from a robe hook and clutched it to her chest.

“You inhabit my husband? You fucking have sex with me?!” She tried to make sense of it all and anger surged within her and she jabbed a finger at him as he calmly pulled the duvet back and got out of bed. “You are fucking sick. Sick in the head!”

“Of course I’m sick in the head,” he growled, and his anger now matched hers, and he glared at her fiercely. “Wouldn’t you be? I turned to you for help, you bitch, and you fucking used me.”

“I didn’t use you! You had every opportunity to leave. I didn’t force you to do anything, but you did it anyway, because despite all this power, you are weak. Pathetic!”

“You used me, and you know it.” He was becoming so furious that he began to cry, hot tears which stung his eyes and when he yelled he bared his teeth and this was it, all his anger, his vitriol, his fury was being unleashed. “Every single fucking person in my life in any position of authority has used me, time and time again, and every single time I’ve fallen for it. I have fallen for it and I have done unspeakable things.” His eyes bore into hers. “You made me kill Elliot. Elliot. He wasn’t my enemy. He didn’t know anything about my power, did he?”

Dr Royce stood and held her dressing gown but she was now defiant, bold, and when she spoke her face contorted into a wicked smile. “He had no clue, Daniel. No clue at all. I just wanted to see how far you’d go, how far I could push you. And you’re right; yet again, you fell for it. You murdered your best friend. How does that make you feel?”

He said nothing and his breathing was deep and quick.

“Why?” he asked, eventually. “Why did you do it?”

“Simple. We’re going to make you famous. I’ll publish papers, I’ll win prizes, I’ll be able to expand my practice, and it’s all thanks to you.”

“I don’t want to be famous,” he sputtered, spittle flying from his lips in rage. “I just want to be invisible, to be anonymous, to be a nobody, but it’s pretty fucking clear to me now that I’ll never be free from you, so I’m ending it now, for both of us.”

She knew what he meant and saw the veins bulging in his neck and she looked away from him, down at the carpet, at her hands as they held the dressing gown against her flimsy nightdress.

“Look at me,” he said, and his voice was low and threatening and he still smelled like her husband but this was a stranger.

“I’m not looking at you.”

Through gritted teeth: “Look at me.”

“No.”

He strode around the bed and gripped her face in his hand and his fingers and thumb were like a vice on her jaw as he tried to force her face towards his but she resisted and clenched her eyes shut and she clawed at his hand and his chest, at the man whom she had loved for thirty-three years, and her fingernails scratched at his arms and all the while she did not open her eyes and she could hear him grunting and when she raised her knee and it met his crotch he wheezed and doubled over. As she ran for the bedroom door he grabbed hold of the dressing gown and attempted to pull her back towards him but she let it go and as she reached the door he chased her and pressed her against it before she had chance to turn the handle and now his breath was in her ear and he was crushing her.

He spun her towards him and shoved her backwards and she felt the cool wall against her shoulder blades and once again he gripped her face and with his other hand he tried to pry her eyelids open with his fingertips and she tried to twist away this way and that but he was too strong and she felt the skin of her eyelids stretch and she began to see lamplight and the blurry colours of the bedroom through her tears and she saw his mouth and his stained teeth and his coarse beard and it was no good, she could not withstand him for long as his fingertips clawed at her eyelids and when he inhabited her he saw Professor Royce suddenly step back and snatch his hand away from her face as if it had been scalded and his eyes were brown again and wide with shock and he said, “Lilian,” in a soft voice as he tried to understand what had happened.

He turned and pulled the door open and ran through the apartment to the entrance door, his bare feet slapping against the tiled floor of the kitchen and his breathing shallow and he wept as he found the keys and twisted them in the lock and as he opened the door he turned to see Professor Royce hurriedly tugging on a pair of trousers and putting on his glasses with trembling hands and in his eyes was utter confusion and once again he said Lilian but this time he called it and his voice was sharp with worry.

The corridors of the apartment complex were cold and she ran over the short coarse carpet and found the door which led to the stairwell and shoved it open with a bang which echoed off the concrete walls and hard floors and she sprinted up the steps two at a time, her hand gliding along the handrail.

This was the end. It was the only way out, the only path to peace that he could see. If he let her live he would never be free; if he let himself live he would continue this dark spiral of evil and pain. The world would be a better place without them both and as he turned and leaped up flight after flight of steps little snippets of memory played in his mind like a reel: the blue lights illuminating the inside of his parents’ car as they lay slumped and motionless; the bedroom in his grandmother’s house; playing cards and eating stolen dessert with Elliot; holding hands with Hannah for the first time.

Finally the staircase ended at a door with a horizontal bar and a sign which said DO NOT ENTER and his lungs burned and his legs ached and he pushed the bar and the door swung open to reveal the city, cold and grey, the dawn hazy, pale sunlight fighting to break through thick stretches of dense cloud. It was raining heavily and a blast of cold air stung him as he slowed to a halt and walked across the flat roof of the apartment tower. The wind whipped about him and as his nightdress became sodden it clung to his skin which tightened in the cold.

He could see everything from up here. The river flowed silently; great towers stretched from the weary city into the sky which hung low and within their walls little squares of dark windows switched to white as the day began. The wind whistled in his ears as he stepped closer to the edge of the building and climbed onto the ledge and he saw people walking below and they seemed so small. He saw cars so tiny they looked like toys reach a junction, pause, then move off again. He saw glimpses of silhouettes in illuminated windows and he thought it such a shame that this all had to end and the reel continued: Hao Zhang at the casino table; Evelyn Bradshaw, glorious and beautiful in the bathroom mirror; Miriam Mensah tending to his bruised body. He thought of Mr Heywood and Rachel Hughes and Victor’s writhing body in flames. He thought of everyone whose life he had torn apart through his own greed and he thought of Daniel Harlow, who seemed a lifetime ago, whom he did not recognise at all, and his toes curled over the lip of the ledge and he wept, he wept for everything that had happened and he wished he could start again but he could not. He was so cold. His skin was soaked. His hair hung by his face, lank and wet.

“No!”

He looked over his shoulder to see Professor Royce emerge from the stairwell, the raindrops instantly attacking the lenses in his glasses, his look of panic, his hand outstretched.

He turned towards him, twisting his feet carefully, his whole body shivering, and this was it. This was it. Arms outstretched. He felt the cold air snake between his fingers. Lean back.

Did he want this? An existence where his only identity was the person he inhabited at that moment? He was nothing more than a spirit, a soul, an energy, destined to flit from body to body for as long as it took him to become so desperately lonely and sad that he either waited to die naturally or took his own life. When he first discovered he had this power he thought it a reward, an opportunity to act with impunity, to never again worry about consequences to actions. But he had come to realise that it was often a torment; a lonesome, desperate, hopeless place where innocent people suffered for his selfish vanity and where evil could flourish within him almost uninhibited. He was purposeless, floating, an invisible entity doomed to wander forever whilst everyone he ever loved either abandoned him or forgot him altogether.

And still he stared at the ceiling and after a long time he decided that regardless of what the future held he knew that he preferred to be the hunter rather than the hunted and on the nightstand at his bedside there lay a handgun which Dr Royce had given him and the cool moonlight picked out its sinister edges and even without touching it he could almost feel the cold bite of metal on his skin.

The next morning was bitterly cold. Fragments of frost clung to every surface, jutting out defiantly in miniscule spikes. It grasped to the leaves of hedgerows and evergreen trees and dusted the world in an eerie yet delicate covering of white save for branches and tree trunks which hung stark and black and still. Thick snowflakes swirled gently down around him as he walked down the street and they left little stings upon his skin where they landed and melted almost instantly and behind him he left footprints in the shallow layer of powder and in his pocket was the gun which he gripped tightly.

Dr Royce had given him directions and instructions. They were simple: his hunter was staying the night in a local hotel and he should wait nearby but out of sight until he emerged and then he should place a bullet in his skull and leave. And then he would be free from her forever. The snow fell softly, blissfully unaware of his turmoil. The sky was beginning to lighten to a pale grey and occasionally a car drove carefully by, wipers swaying, small snowdrifts gathering at the base of the windscreen and thick slabs of snow breaking away with the speed and disintegrating onto the road. A march of electricity pylons came and went as he walked beneath them and in the frozen air their steel skeletons stood cold and naked. In the distance trees disappeared into a white mist.

He continued into the outskirts of the city where car parks lay wide and bare and shops stood in dark silence and the birds made no sound and all was quiet save for the crunch of his footsteps. He walked down an alleyway where frost furred the metal surfaces of huge dustbins and puddles froze and the only sign of life was a soft jet of steam blowing from a flue which jutted from a brick wall above him.

He could see the hotel now: a large Victorian house which had been refurbished into a few small rooms and at the edge of a small car park outside the front of the building a large wooden sign gave the name of the hotel and below it a separate smaller sign said NO VACANCIES and a low brick wall separated it from the pavement and in one of the windows he saw a pale yellow light behind closed curtains and he wondered if that was him.

It must have been a strange sight for anyone who happened to rouse themselves out of their warm bed and look out of their window upon this middle-aged woman who stood uneasily by a lamppost and often cast furtive glances towards a hotel. His toes were freezing and the vapour of his breath gathered in the air around his face and he buried his mouth and nose into his scarf and waited. The sky lightened further and the streetlights turned off one by one and he became more anxious with every passing minute, not only for the act he was to execute but for the fate of this poor woman whom he inhabited once he had departed and escaped and avoided all the pain which he left behind.

A door opened and he looked to see a man step out of the hotel. He was thickset and quite tall but he could make out no further details. He wore a heavy coat and a fedora and he had his back to him but he fit the description which Dr Royce had given him and his hand tightened around the grip of the gun in his pocket.

He saw the man’s breath billow into the air as he sighed and walked past the sign onto the pavement and down the street away from him and his steps crunched and compressed the gathering snow and he hunched against the whirling flakes which tumbled around him to the ground and rested there softly and he followed him and the world was white and grey and black and he kept his eyes trained on the man who turned into the alleyway he had come from and this was his chance.

There was no need for last words, no dramatic finale to this man’s life and he raised the handgun and as he walked he trained it upon the wide back of the man and squeezed the trigger. The gunshot cracked and reverberated off the walls of the narrow passageway and was almost deafening as it split the still morning air and the man had no indication that the clock counting down his life had reached its final seconds and he crumpled to the ground with a low groan and lay face down on the wet floor of the alley where snow faded out and his hat tipped gently from his head and rocked to a halt nearby.

He stood motionless and listened carefully for any inkling that the sound of gunfire had disturbed those who lay in their beds in the houses around them and when the silence continued his curiosity overcame him and he crouched down by the body and took him by the shoulder and rolled him onto his back and even though a stream of blood trickled from the corner of his nose and mouth there was no mistaking Elliot’s face.

He was not dead. His wide eyes rolled in their sockets in confusion and occasionally focused on the white sky or on his face and he spluttered and coughed and choked on his own blood as it welled in his throat. The bullet had entered his back and exited through his chest and blood oozed from the hole in his coat and soaked into the surrounding material and he knelt above him and called his name and pressed both hands hard over the wound which was warm beneath his palms.

He coughed again, harder this time and the blood bubbled and erupted from his mouth like a volcano gathering the strength to erupt and he tilted his head to the side to allow it to flow onto the cold ground. He said his name softly, over and over again, and he could see Elliot’s face go grey and pale as his life began to ebb away and he did not die instantly like they do in film or television but instead he sputtered and gasped for several agonising minutes and all the while his childlike bemused expression said what happened and why me and it softened and grew ever more vacant and his breaths slowed and became further and further apart and it was a ghastly sight and his bloodsoaked hands grasped either side of Elliot’s face and he said I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, my dear friend I’m so sorry and he called for help and his voice rang out in the cold morning air but nobody responded. Elliot’s eyes seemed to train and focus on him in the seconds before he fell still and they displayed a hint of recognition but perhaps that was all in his mind and then it was just him, hunched over a silent body from whose lips the trickle of blood slowed and dripped in thick slow strings into the small puddle which had formed beneath his head. It stopped oozing from the hole in his chest and his skin was almost white and his eyelids were still wide and his mouth was slightly open and he had killed his best friend in the snow and the frost and if he had concentrated hard instead of being consumed by anguish he would have felt the last desire to live drain from him like water down a plughole.

“I don’t blame you,” she said. “I have not yet earned your trust.” And then she said, “Who do you trust?”

He did not respond but he felt her power over him and he did not like it. He was usually the one with the power. The long leaves of a spider plant moved gently in the breeze which crept through an open window. The clock ticked.

“The screenshots you sent me yesterday,” she continued, and she looked at him with her blue eyes and placed both hands on the thigh of her crossed legs and leaned forward slightly. “You must be very proud of yourself.”

He thought for a moment: on edge, cagey. “Which screenshot are you referring to?”

Dr Royce gave a half-smile and it was slightly hostile. “Does it matter?”

These rhetorical questions and half-cloaked riddles began to irritate him and he saw her eyes flit to his fingers as they gripped the arms a little tighter. “You told me to come here. What do you want?” he said sternly.

“I need you to do something for me, and you’re not going to like it, but if you do this you will not regret it, I promise you.”

“No.”

“Daniel, I-” She saw him glare at her and his eyes blazed at the mention of the name and she corrected herself. “Just let me explain.”

Why am I here, he thought, and he looked down at his lap. He had not inhabited anyone else since the house fire and he was overweight and his thighs pressed together. He should not have come. Why did he? He did not owe Dr Royce anything; he had no need to see her ever again, and upon this realisation he went to stand and Dr Royce jumped upright from her chair and motioned with her palms for him to remain seated.

“No – wait. Look, just listen to me for a few minutes, okay?” She stood and did not know what to do with her hands and they fidgeted a little by her side but her face remained still, confident. “I’m just going to say it. I need you to kill someone for me…for us.”

His head sunk and he shook it slightly. “I’m not your assassin for hire,” he said. “I’m not going to kill someone just because you want me to. And I’m not your puppet.”

“You don’t understand,” she said cooly, and she paced over to the window and looked out and the white light from outside washed over her. “Don’t let emotions cloud your purpose. This is about control. It’s in both our interests that this man is dealt with.”

“What do you mean, both our interests?”

She continued as if he had not spoken. “This is about your ability to make the world bow to your will,” she said, and she turned and looked at him and her eyes were sharp.

These enigmas she kept repeating were beginning to fog his mind and he found it difficult to concentrate and so he buried his forehead in his hand as his elbow rested on the arm of the chair and clenched his eyelids shut.

She came and crouched by him. “It’s in both our interests,” she said, quietly, “because this person knows. He knows about you, and he’s trying to track you down.”

He lifted his head and looked at her and her face was only a foot away from his. “He knows?”

“Yes. And this is dangerous. It’s dangerous because it threatens everything.” He could see a vein swell in her temple. “What we have – what you have – is special; I keep saying that, I know, but that’s because it is. You have the ability to change the world, change the course of history, in a way that nobody else can. But you can’t do that if you’re being hunted.”

His eyes strayed to her cheek in thought and then his gaze drifted back to her eyes. “How does he know about me?”

Dr Royce shook her head. “I don’t know,” she muttered, “but I don’t believe he knows that we know. Do you see, now, why we have to remove this obstacle? If he keeps breathing, everything we have worked for dies.”

“You mean everything you have worked for.”

“No,” she said, and her voice was cold. “Everything you have become. Nobody but me will accept what you’ve done: the murders, the riots. He will find a way to find you, to stop you. You can’t turn back now.”

He was quiet for a long time and Dr Royce returned to the window and gave him space to think. After a while he said: “What’s his name?”

“I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t think so, Doctor. He’ll never be able to find me. I’ll always be ten steps ahead. And, like I said: I’m not your puppet.”

He stood and gathered his coat and bag from the floor and was almost at the door when she called out to him.

“If you do this, I’ll never make contact with you again.”

He turned, and she continued: “Never. This will be the last you see or hear from me, and you’ll be free. Free to roam the world and do as you wish.”

“I thought we were going to change the world.” It was not a question. His voice was low, monotonous.

“You don’t need my help to do that.” A weak smile. “I promise; do this, and we part ways.”

He turned a corner in the museum and made his way through the exhibition hall where the rows of miniature portraits were being carefully taken down and boxed in packing foam by a handful of staff. He walked through the imprints exhibition where a host of black handprints covered the wall and his passing was reflected in a shard of glazed pottery which held an indentation of a child’s thumb and he found a door marked ‘Private’ and knocked on it.

Professor Royce answered and regarded the portly woman and gave a polite smile. “Good afternoon. May I help you? Are you lost?”

The woman seemed nervous, fretful, and looked over his shoulder past him.

“Is Hannah here?” she asked. Professor Royce thought this slightly odd but stepped aside to reveal Hannah seated at a desk. She looked up inquisitively and saw the woman’s eyes and her heart fluttered and sank all at once and she said, “Oh, hello – what brings you here?” and as far as Professor Royce could tell the two were friends, and he made his excuses and left the room to walk the halls of the museum.

Hannah stood and her eyes did not move from him. “Is it you?”

“It’s me.” He began to pace the room, agitated; she did not move.

“What’s happened?”

He stopped to flash her an expression she could not quite decipher and said, “Oh, you don’t want to know. Plenty.” His demeanour changed momentarily and he seemed almost proud. “Did you see the news about the house fire, the little girl?”

“That was you? You saved her?”

“That was me.”

“I was reading about that this morning. The little girl is back at school. Shame about the man, though, the one who saved her.” She half-gestured towards him. “Well – I mean you, I suppose.”

“What do you mean?”

He did not know and she felt sorry for him and for herself for having to break the news. “I’m sorry…I’m afraid he died. Smoke inhalation.”

His shoulders slumped and he looked utterly conflicted and dejected and embittered and he said, “So when I do evil, people die, and when I do good, people die,” and he slumped down on a stool and she went over and sat on another stool next to him.

“Tell me what’s happened.”

“I think you were right about Doctor Royce.”

Her head turned towards the door to check it was closed and turned back. “What did she say?”

“She wants me to kill someone.”

Hannah was stunned. “What? She wants you to kill someone?”

He nodded.

“Who?”

“I don’t know his name. But he knows about me, and he’s hunting me.”

She gathered her thoughts, looking absentmindedly at the corner of the room, at the great volumes of books on the shelves, the desk lamps, the stacks of journals and papers. “It doesn’t make any sense. What did you tell her?”

“She said she would leave me alone forever if I did it. It happens tomorrow.”

She put her hand on his and even though it was not his hand when he squeezed hers it felt like him. “You can’t seriously be thinking of going through with this.”

“It means I’d be free,” he said, and when he looked at her her image shimmered and blurred through the welling tears.

She looked at him and when this unknown woman met her gaze with her cool blue eyes and said, “I need help, Hannah,” her heart broke.

It was the next day: the night before he had walked from the platform back through the ticket barriers and all the while little droplets of blood crept steadily down his skin. He climbed back into the car he had arrived in – remarkably, it was still where he had left it, at the side of the road up on the kerb with the driver door wide open – and once inside he went through the motions of turning out his pockets and the contents of a small handbag and finding out who he was.

As he did so he caught a glimpse of himself in the rear-view mirror and stopped for a few seconds to take in the sight. He must have been late forties, shoulder length hair which was naturally brown judging by the roots but had at some point a few weeks ago been dyed a dirty blonde, gold earrings like buttons on his lobes, and the blood on his face looked like a windowpane in the rain and it spattered his clothing.

A phone, some keys: he deduced from messages that his name was Sharon. A thick purse containing several cards yielded his address and he drove there: an expensive house in an affluent neighbourhood where the driveway was wide enough to fit four cars and a large wooden porch framed the entrance door and ivy blanketed an entire gable save for where it had been trimmed around a window and when he walked in the front door a man who was presumably his husband called “Sharon?” from an adjoining room and when he walked into the hallway and saw his wife and the state she was in he barely noticed that her eyes had changed colour.

“Sharon!” he exclaimed, and he walked up the stairs and found the bathroom and took a long hot shower as Sharon’s husband thumped on the door and called her name and the blood washed from his face and dripped around his heels and swirled within the water as it flowed towards the drain.

He stepped out of the cubicle and wrapped a towel around his body and when he opened the bathroom door he inhabited his husband and when Sharon looked down at her wet skin and blurted that she should be on a train and why was she at home he managed to convince her that she had come home because there was some problem with the track and all trains had been cancelled, and after being gaslit for a short while she pulled on her pyjamas and dressing gown and flopped onto the sofa in front of the television and said no more of it.

Now, the next morning, he left the house and walked the leafy suburbs. He was a little surprised that he felt no remorse, but any shred of guilt would have easily been overwhelmed by the growing belief that sometimes the line between good and evil was blurred and that the same person who would call him a monster for ending Victor’s life or the life of the man last night would also concede that the world was better off without them.

He walked for a while and eventually passed the sandstone church where the funeral had taken place a month or so earlier and he glanced over towards where Daniel’s grave was but could not see it and nodded a greeting to the reverend who was pinning something to a notice board and continued on his way. He was a man in his early fifties and his knees were beginning to ache with the long stroll and he found himself craving a cigarette which was strange to him having rarely smoked previously and he began to grow tired of this body but this was put from his mind when he turned the corner into a side street and saw a small gathering of frantic individuals outside a house and from an upper window a child of around ten or eleven cried and slammed their palms against a window pane and behind them flared the unmistakable and ominous glow of fire.

A woman standing on the front lawn screamed uncontrollably and he presumed this was the child’s mother and one or two people held her back from sprinting inside the house and told her it was too dangerous and that the fire department were on their way.

He stopped and took in the scene; it was worse than first impressions suggested. The front door of the house was open and beyond it he saw flames licking at the staircase and smoke was billowing from an open window and he looked again at the child, a young girl, who was shrieking and crying and slapping the window pane and when she did her little palms and splayed fingers pressed momentarily against the glass in a helpless way and her screams were ever so faint and he sprinted towards the door and burst over the threshold into the house.

The heat was immediate and intense and the air scorched his mouth and throat and the smoke roiled against the ceiling in a thick blanket and he covered his nose and mouth with the crook of his elbow and ran up the stairs. It was dark and he could barely see and flames clung to door frames and boiled paintwork off window boards and he oriented himself and kicked open a door and this was the first time since the lightning strike that he considered that he could actually die and then he saw the little girl, and she was beginning to buckle in the heat and the smoke and he saw her hold a hand to her throat and slowly sink towards the ground as she came to terms with her little life coming to an end so soon, but he took her in his arms and barrelled out of the room and back down the stairs and his throat felt as if it were swelling to three times its size and his eyes were burning and watering so much he could barely see. He wheezed and coughed and stumbled towards what he thought was the daylight with the little girl in his arms and then he was out, on the front lawn, staggering as far as he could before his knees bowed and warped and he crumbled to the grass with the girl and with blackened hands he tried to wipe away the soot which stung his eyes and his breathing rasped and burned and he was beginning to lose consciousness and just before he blacked out his bloodshot and swollen eyes landed mercifully upon a bystander who was looking at him in deep concern and he inhabited her with the last of his energy.

He looked at the man on the ground who had lost consciousness and the skin around his nose and mouth was black and his tongue had swollen grotesquely and the stubble on his face had singed away, and he hurried over to him and turned him onto his side as an ambulance screamed around the corner and screeched to a halt and two paramedics leaped out and took over. He stood and looked to his right where the girl was coughing and spluttering but conscious in the tight embrace of a mother whose tears flowed so freely as she sobbed that he was certain they could have put out the fire. One paramedic pried her from her mother’s arms and placed an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth as the other tended to the man who lay motionless on the ground and all he could see were the man’s legs and his boots behind the paramedic who knelt beside him and hastily pulled equipment from a large bag.

Later that day he sat at a table in a café and picked at a pastry and thought deeply. This power he had could and should not be ignored. He had it for a reason, and that reason was yet to reveal itself, but in the meantime he had wielded it in destructive ways but also that morning he had saved a child’s life and he could not help but wonder whether he would still have run into the blaze if he did not have the ability to leap into another body and it was a question he could not answer but he knew that people ran into burning buildings every day and people killed others every day. He grappled with this for a while and struggled to define what he had and had no idea as to why he had been granted this so-called blessing in the first place but one thing he did know was that it felt like a curse and another thing he knew was that the taste of death he had experienced in that house fire terrified him beyond words.

He took out his phone and scrolled through a local news website and took two screenshots before searching the internet for Dr Royce’s email address.

He sent two emails. The first was a screenshot of a headline: SERVICES DELAYED AFTER MAN HIT BY TRAIN and the article said that officers were working to identify the man who had died after being struck by a train but they were not treating the incident as suspicious and he wrote Me in the subject line.

The second was another screenshot from an article published that day and the headline read HERO SAVES CHILD FROM HOUSE FIRE and the article said that the girl was expected to make a full recovery but that the man was in a critical condition and he wrote Also Me and sent it.

Ten minutes later the phone vibrated and it was a response and the email said simply So? You can think bigger. Meet me tomorrow at the office and he placed the phone face down on the table and sat very still for a long time and in his mind Hannah’s voice said She is not trying to help you.

A train approached and from his position through a pair of wide glass doors which looked out onto the cold grey platform beyond he saw it slow to a halt and passengers alighted and the doors swept aside with a hiss and they filed through the waiting area towards the exit and glanced at the man who sat bolt upright and looked straight ahead. Other passengers stepped from the dim light of the platform into the warm light of the train and it pulled slowly away again with a whine and the carriages clicked past quicker and quicker as they gradually accelerated like a film reel until with a gasp the last carriage zipped past and once again the platform was quiet and the track was empty.

After ten minutes another train came and went just as the one before it and once again the waiting area filled and emptied like lungs and yet still he sat and he did not move but then over the loudspeaker he heard what he had been waiting for.

The next train approaching platform six does not stop here. Please stand well clear of the platform edge.

Expressionless he stood and walked through the doors and onto the platform. It was cold out here and he looked left and right and on both sides the track disappeared into the night where the light from the canopy above him had been exhausted and within the inky blackness to his left he saw two white headlights glow like the eyes of a monster. He took a step towards the edge of the platform and before him the steel track lay stern and cold and the soft light from the overhead bulbs picked out the detail and angle of every stone in the ballast as it rose and fell between the tracks like waves and he took another step forward and he could sense that one or two people nearby were becoming restless at this sight and he turned his head to the left again and the headlights were approaching steadily. It is a curious thing how something travelling towards you at speed seems to be approaching slowly right up until the last few seconds and a man behind him called mate and he kept his eyes steadfast and continued to look left and the toes of his shoes were now at the edge of the platform and from the corner of his eye he saw someone dressed in uniform start running towards him yelling sir, sir, get back and still the headlights approached but he could hear it now, very softly but he could hear the train as it hurtled along the track and it was too late to brake now and he turned around and a handful of people all gaped at him in horror and one woman had her hand to her mouth and to his right he heard sir, get back and the headlights were beginning to illuminate him now and the train horn was blaring and he toppled backwards.

The train driver would need years of counselling to come to terms with the death of the young gentleman whose body was hit by the train with such force that it broke through the windshield and entered the cab. It was etched into his memory so indelibly that whenever he shut his eyes to sleep or pray he would relive it all again. The passengers on the platform, too, would be scarred by this trauma for years to come, all apart from one woman whose face and clothing were spattered with droplets of blood but simply let her hand fall from her mouth to her side and turned and walked silently through the waiting area and back down the stairs and even in their state of shock those who witnessed this thought it was strange.

Today, eight years later, I went to the British Museum by myself and stood in front of the same statue. She was in the same room, had the same expression, the same broken nose. She was unchanged.

I, on the other hand, was not.

When I took that photograph eight years ago I was newly-divorced, growing used to an uncertain future, slightly rudderless and quite lost.

At the time, though, I don’t remember feeling this way. It’s often only when you look back on periods in your life after travelling some distance that you realise just how challenging they were at the time. But there was no choice, other than to keep moving forward.

It reminds me of the chant from Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, which I read as a child and then read to my children as a parent:

And so eight years ago, through it I went. Not all at once, but day by day, and along the way I formed new friendships, had new experiences, recorded new memories. I strengthened my relationship with my family; I met a beautiful woman at work who later became my beautiful wife. I grew, became more resilient, and gradually changed.

Eight years ago in this place I was looking at someone I didn’t know, looking for something I didn’t know.

Now, I know both. This is Queen Ada of Caria, and I am changed.

He walked through the night until he reached the pub where just a couple of weeks earlier he had scuffled with Callum Reid and thus set in motion the path to his eventual demise on the cold ground of an alleyway behind a bus stop and as he approached he heard a familiar voice and slowed to a halt at what he saw.

It was him; there was no doubt. He recognised the cropped hair at the sides of his head; the dark stubble; he was even wearing the blue tracksuit top he had been in when he had groped Hannah’s backside all that time ago. It was he who had caused the fight between Daniel and Hannah which had led to her leaving which had led to him sitting in the bar with Alex which had led to him walking through the storm and being struck by lightning which had led to him standing here, in this place, as this woman, with these memories of lives he had altered beyond recognition and those whose lives he had taken.

He was away from the light of the pub sign, the illuminated lettering on the side of the building, in the shadows of a narrow passageway between it and the neighbouring house and he had a girl pressed up against the wall and with one large hand he had her wrists pinned above her head against the brickwork and she was attempting to fight him off.

No, he heard her say, and her voice was taut and high with fear. Get off me, leave me alone and he had his sleazy face buried in her neck and was attempting to kiss along her collarbone and he stood in the light of a streetlamp which cast shadows down his face and watched as with his free hand the abuser groped and mauled at the girl’s breast through her top and he ran his tongue along her jawline and up to her earlobe and she shrieked and turned her face away and he muttered and slurred repugnant words which were muffled by the skin of her throat.

She squirmed and writhed in a fruitless attempt to escape and when she tried to protest louder he clamped his hand around her jaw so that his fingers and thumb gripped her cheeks and puckered her lips and he said shut the fuck up, you bitch and her eyes were wide with terror and he kissed her in a great wet movement and her blonde hair fell about her shoulders and he clamped a hand over her mouth and her eyes rolled in horror like those of a wild horse and they landed upon him and when she saw him watching her muffled cries caught in her mouth and with her eyes she implored him to rescue her.

“Is there a problem here, love?” The voice was hostile and challenging and from the shadows emerged another man whom he recognised as being one of the group that night and he stood a little too close to him and raised himself straight and tall and square and defiant and he looked from the companion to the man and then back to his companion and thought fuck this. He thought, maybe I do have a gift. He thought, maybe my purpose in life is to rid the world of perverts and scumbags and evil creatures like this prick and he looked at the companion and the companion glared back at him and that was all he needed.

He saw Elena’s expression change but he did not look at her for long. Instead he turned and just as the abuser’s hand went to paw between the girl’s legs he took him by the wrist and bent his arm up behind his back and as he howled in pain the girl took flight and ran whimpering and sobbing into Elena’s arms who held her despite her own confusion and as she led the girl away to safety he pulled the man’s arm up further and placed a palm on the back of his head and with all his might shoved his face into the brickwork and he heard the crunch of the man’s nose breaking and when he gripped the man by the hair on top of his head his lips were bloodied and his teeth were grouted in red and blood gushed from his nose. What the fuck? exclaimed the man and he wheeled the abuser to face him and inhabited him as soon as they locked eyes and suddenly the wailing stopped and the man looked at him and saw the blood on his face and took a step back in shock and as he strode away in silence he spat a great wad of blood onto the floor and his companion called after him but he kept walking.

He found a set of car keys in his pocket and took them out and pressed the unlock button until a nearby vehicle lit up and winked at him and he put a thumb to one nostril and snorted out another mass of blood and pressed the other nostril and did the same. As he got behind the wheel he saw his companion watching him dumbfounded in the light of the pub and he sped away and in his rear view mirror the man became smaller and smaller until he rounded a bend and then he disappeared.

Victor Sutherland deserved it. Maybe those people who were crushed to death in the riot deserved it. The person he was now definitely deserves it. So what if his actions were wrong? One less pervert on the earth was never a bad thing.

He drove through the night and the radio played music he did not listen to and the beams from the streetlights strobed slowly over his bloodied face and he did not say a word and he drove out of the city through the countryside and a plane took off from a nearby airport and swept overhead and if a passenger had looked out of their window at that very moment they would have seen the white headlights of a car slicing silently through the black land and they would have thought nothing of it.

He took hot showers every morning and night and lounged around the apartment in a thick pink dressing gown and fluffy slippers and ate the contents of the refrigerator and drank the bottles of wine which lay in a small rack between the kitchen cupboards. He needed respite, shelter, peace for a while from this chaotic life and he rarely ventured outside save to buy food and drink or to empty the revolting soiled cat litter. He downloaded a dating app and flirted with strangers online and enjoyed the thrill of the chase, the flutter of excitement when the first message came through, the evolution of the conversation, the power to ghost or not, however he felt at the time.

In the evenings he sat in front of the television and absentmindedly tousled the fur between the cat’s ears and as characters in sitcoms laughed or cried or shouted at each other he paid no attention but thought about the lives he had ruined thus far and the woman’s theory that every person is in an ongoing struggle between good and evil in themselves which only ends when they die, and he felt consumed by guilt. It spread through his guts and his innards and gripped his viscera in a cold vice and his throat went dry and his heart sunk as he thought about how Hao Zhang felt when he saw his bank balance the morning after that awful night. He wondered whether Sienna Karimi had come to terms with watching a motorcyclist bleed out on the cold ground because of him. He hoped David Hopkins’ child had not come to harm after he left him on the floor and considered how devastated he must have been when he searched for messages from his wife and could not find them, and he did not look in the mirror any more for he hated who he was and whatever he had become.

But the power was intoxicating and the intrusive thoughts were plentiful and even now as he waited for Dr Royce to open her office door and see him he thought about what he could or would do once the darkness within him prevailed again. He did not know if or when this pendulum would ever stop swinging.

When Dr Royce opened the door and saw out her patient with a smile and a handshake she saw the woman sitting patiently and noticed her eyes and there was a blink of recognition and an almost imperceptible steeling of herself and she said simply: “Come on through,” and led the way.

He entered the office and sat in the armchair and for the first time in a while he felt nervous. His pulse quickened and his fingertips cooled and he was on his guard. He felt as if he were trapped in a cage with a tiger who could pounce at any moment, a cobra which had reared up but not yet struck and in his heightened state he took in the smallest details of his surroundings: the wisps of hair at the nape of Dr Royce’s neck, so light they were barely visible; the volumes of reference books on the shelves, one of which had not been put back properly and was jutting out; the ticking of the wall clock; his own breathing. He knew he ultimately had power over her but did not feel it at this time.

She sat and crossed her legs and placed her hands on the notepad which rested on her thigh and she looked at him with her blue eyes behind her glasses and did not say anything for a few moments, assessing him, gauging his state.

“How do you feel after the recent events?” she asked, eventually.

“You mean the riot you made me start. The one where people died.”

“I didn’t make you do anything,” she protested calmly, a little shake of the head, leaning back just a touch. “You are your own person-”

He scoffed, interrupting. “I haven’t been my own person in a long time.”

She continued as if he had not spoken. “You are your own person,” she repeated, “and I didn’t make you do anything.”

“Well, whether you made me or not, Doctor, I wish I hadn’t done it.” He was becoming riled, and the anxiety was fading.

“Why?”

“Why?” he exclaimed. “Have you seen the news? Three people died.”

She looked at him disappointedly as if even mentioning the deaths was pathetic. “People die all the time, Daniel.”

His eyes burned at the mention of a name he no longer recognised. He was not Daniel. Daniel was steadily rotting in the ground.

If she noticed his irritation she did not reveal it, but instead went on. “I can’t keep saying it: you have a gift. Nobody else in the world has the power you have. Don’t waste it just because you feel a bit guilty.”

His palms were beginning to sweat. “I’ve ruined lives,” he said, and he emphasised each word.

Again she looked at him in silence and he could not read the expression on her face. “Do you feel guilty about Victor?” she asked.

He clenched his jaw before he spoke. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because he deserved it.”

“How do you know the people who died in the riot didn’t deserve it?” She sat bad and opened her palms. “How do you know the people whose lives you’ve supposedly ruined didn’t deserve it?”

“But it’s not my place to be judge, jury and executioner,” he protested, and at these words Dr Royce stood up as if he had solved a riddle.

“Ah, but it is, don’t you see?” Her face was bright, almost hopeful. “This is a blessing. You are changing the course of history. You have the ability to determine the future. Who else can say they have that?”

“I don’t want this blessing!”

Her mood changed in an instant and she brought her face close to his and he could smell her breath and there was an energy inside her, an intensity he did not like.

“Well, you’ve fucking got it,” she growled, and he could see the mascara on her eyelashes and the capillaries in the whites of her eyes and the pores of her skin on the bridge of her nose. “So deal with it.”

The last time my father and I walked into this snooker hall it was 1999. As we cross the threshold today it is clear that hardly anything has changed in this building: the same wide staircase, carpet worn threadbare through decades of footfall; the same glazed tiles, half-height around the wall; the same smell.

The only difference is, the thick pall of cigarette smoke which once clung to the ceiling is no longer there.

Back then the snooker table seemed huge, the game impossible. I would sit on a stool, racking up your points on an archaic metal scoreboard and sulk as I watched you pot ball after ball. (Those scoreboards are still there now, of course.)

Occasionally you would miss and I would get a chance, but inevitably fluff my shot and slope dejectedly back to the stool to resume my scoring duties.

Now I stand and chalk my cue and if I look closely I can see the ghosts of us on the next table all those years ago. Whilst the building has remained the same, we are both changed. Twenty-seven years ago I was fifteen years old, you had brown hair instead of grey, and neither of us were divorced. In between leaving this room decades ago and stepping into it today a whole load of life has happened to us both: school, work, relationships ending, relationships beginning, children growing.

Back then, I spoke to you as your son; now, I speak to you as your friend. We chat about our lives, about work. It’s easy, as it always has been. For the first time ever I win the first frame, then the second, then the third. We call it a night and promise to make this a regular occurrence, beginning with a pledge to meet every month before rowing back to every couple of months, life’s commitments getting in the way of such close regularity.

And then we leave the room once again, almost three decades after the last time, and behind us the light above the snooker table goes out.

The council had erected a temporary funfair to celebrate the new year and he walked past brightly-lit carousels where children sat upon rigid horses whose faces were painted with absurd smiles and circled up and down whilst parents watched and smiled in mittened hands and woollen hats. He passed street food vendors and breathed in the sweet air which smelled of sugary doughnuts and chocolate and he passed people sitting on wooden chairs at tiny tables beneath an awning and enjoying a hot drink or a smoke and the river flowed silently by, the great mass of water travelling onwards, city lights shimmering off its surface.

He was troubled. Hannah’s words had stayed with him as he left the gallery in the body of a sophisticated lady with large pearl earrings and a cashmere scarf; they had replayed in his mind as he inhabited a student in a café, hunched over his laptop and surrounded by stacks of books and wearing bulky headphones. They had remained etched in his memory as he wound through the maze of city streets as a taxi driver, trying to ignore the gaggle of boisterous partygoers in the back of his vehicle (although, enraged by a drink spilled in his lap by a loud drunken girl whose breasts were barely contained by her dress he had eventually driven out of the city, pulled over to the side of a dark country lane and thrown the car keys as far as he could into the pitch black undergrowth. The girls shrieked and cried, the boys burst aggressively out of the car and were rowdy and abrasive, but he stalked down the road away from them until he could flag down a passing vehicle and inhabit the driver).

And now as a forty-something journalist named Elena Vasquez he leaned against a wide stone balustrade and looked out over the river at the bridges and buildings and the hustle and bustle of the city and thought upon Hannah’s words again. When Dr Royce had told him that his power could change everything he had been swept up by her words, engulfed in the excitement, the promise of great things, but all that she had done thus far was encourage him to incite a riot and when he had walked through the city square earlier that evening the council building had stood dark and sad and empty and the shops had great sheets of plywood in the windows and the plinth stood alone and cold and he felt only remorse and regret, not power.

Hannah’s voice echoed in his mind. She said, Do not trust Doctor Royce. She said, She is not your friend. She said, Please, listen to me.

From her side a voice said, “Don’t suppose you can spare any change?”

He looked down and saw the forlorn figure of a woman, around the same age, looking up at him from the ground with large eyes which were sunk into sallow grey skin. She was clothed in rags and a woollen hat was pulled down to her eyebrows but the stitching had torn in places and it revealed wide gaps of lank hair. Her legs were bound within a dirty blue sleeping bag and her knees were bent to her chest and a piece of cardboard was propped against an old coffee cup and it just read HUNGRY and inside the cup was a few coins.

He reached into his handbag and found a purse and inside it a few banknotes and a handful of coins and he gave them to the woman who clutched them in both hands and held the money to her chest as if it were the most precious thing to her that ever was and said thank you, thank you miss, and her teeth were gappy and yellow and one or two were missing and he sat next to her on the cold ground and rested his back against a stone pedestal from which rose an ornate streetlamp.

Together they watched people pass by; a forest of legs going from right to left and left to right.

“Do you ever feel invisible?” he asked.

“Worse than that,” said the woman. “They see me, but they ignore me. For most of them I’m not even worth a glance.”

He was quiet. “What does that say about them?”

The woman considered her response before answering. “It would be easy to say they’re bad people,” she replied, “but that’s often not the case. Even in my position I still believe that most people are good at their core. The problem is everyone is caught up in their own world, their own bubble, and they are too busy or preoccupied to notice others.”

“You believe people are good?”

The woman smiled and her lips were dry and chapped. “Oh, yes,” she grinned. “Oh, yes. But I see both sides from where I am. I see glimpses of humanity: a woman pushes a pram and something falls from it, she doesn’t notice. Another person picks it up and hurries after them to return it. Just yesterday I saw a man in a wheelchair at the bottom of a ramp, just sitting there helplessly, too weak to wheel himself up it. Streams of people just walked by and were ignorant to his plight but eventually one gentleman in a flat cap stopped and asked him if he needed help and pushed him to the top of the ramp and they smiled and shook hands and then went their separate ways.

“And then I see pickpockets lifting wallets from people’s coats. I see fistfights where people’s lives are ruined in an instant. I witness couples arguing, screaming at each other and they don’t even notice I’m here. I believe people are neither good nor evil; they’re both. It lives in our hearts and sometimes one wins, sometimes the other.”

A family walked by and the child peered at the two women huddled at the edge of the embankment and pointed at them with a plump finger as he toddled by and his mother turned his shoulder away from them and tutted and murmured something unintelligible as if merely observing them would cause disease or melancholy.

“You see?” said the lady, and she held out a palm before her and she wore fingerless gloves. “They see me but turn away. That’s worse than not seeing me at all, in my mind.”

He buried his chin into the collar of his coat against the frosty breeze. In front of him a tall concrete building was illuminated by blue spotlights and against the black sky it stood imposingly over them like a sentinel.

“The Egyptians believed that when someone died they would travel to the afterlife,” he said. “There, their heart would be weighed against a feather. If the heart was lighter than the feather, they were allowed to enter the afterlife. If it was heavier, it meant their soul was wicked and their heart was devoured by a monster.”

The woman thought on this but said nothing.

After a few moments of no sound but the hum of the city he said: “Sooner or later, you’ve got to sit with what you’ve done.” And then he turned to the woman and asked, “Do you think people are trustworthy?”

Once again she thought carefully. “The nature of trust,” she said slowly, “is such that you only know if someone can be trusted when they are put in a position where they could betray you. People are like this river behind us. Most of the time they flow predictably, but then occasionally something changes and a storm hits and that is when you see whether the banks hold or whether the river becomes destructive. Everyone is trustworthy, until they’re not.”

Again, a few moments of silence as they looked around them. The crowds were growing and his watch confirmed that midnight was a just few minutes away.

“Trust is not deciding whether someone will let you down or not,” the woman continued. “It’s deciding who is worth the risk. People are messy, selfish, scared, but occasionally they will surprise you and give you their last cigarette…or the contents of their purse.” She smiled warmly, and for the first time her eyes twinkled. “If you do find someone who is worth the risk, you must take hold of them and not let go.”

Midnight struck. The sky erupted with fireworks and music played hauntingly in the distance and the people turned their faces upward as if exalting a great idol and their smiles were illuminated in swathes of red and blue and white and with each burst they gasped and praised the beauty of it all, and he put his arm around the woman and drew her into him and she placed her head on his shoulder and he could smell the grease in her hair but he could also feel the rhythm of her heartbeat and he could not be sure but he thought he saw a tear trickle over her cheek and in its wake it left a clean trail through the grime of her skin.

I’m not surprised; last night I saw an image of him and his friends on his Snapchat story, a photograph taken at night through a greasy lens. He stands tall, arms folded, his friends over his shoulder, hand signs at the camera: a V-sign here, a bird flipped there. Blurred exposure. A girl - strappy top, long blonde hair - laughs and shields her eyes from the camera, all of them captured in the flash of an iPhone.

A group of friends, a park at night. Alcohol begged, stolen and borrowed from older brothers and kitchen cupboards. That one friend, progressed enough in puberty to have cultivated a wispy moustache, sent to the local corner shop with a tenner to blag some cans. Making memories on cold grass.

I don’t possess memories like these. Growing up in an ultra-religious household meant my relationship with alcohol was restricted to a thimbleful of Cointreau at Christmas, and maybe a glass of house red at a wedding. I never went to parks at night with friends, never perched on swings and climbing frames swigging cider, never improvised adulthood in half-lit places.

As a result, I don’t quite know how to react as we drive through the village and my son nurses a hangover. It’s all part of growing up, a voice tells me, but it’s not my voice because this never happened to me. He’s going to become an alcoholic, says another voice, this one very much mine, the worrier. He’s falling into the wrong crowd.

The worrier in me often wins out. A few days ago my son told me he’d had a can of Monster (an energy drink which is essentially an arm’s length away from poison). Instantly, I send him an Instagram reel which illustrates all the chemicals and sugar contained in a single can.

Bro, he replies. A three-letter word, but I sense the undercurrent. Stop worrying so much, it says. Relax. Give me space.

Later that same car journey my son tells me that he started chatting to a girl last night. He seems proud - lanky, a little nerdy, he’s never been particularly confident in front of the opposite sex - but his expression falls when he recounts that she ended up talking to someone else, and asking them to walk her home.

This is something we can all identify with. The flutter of talking to someone you find attractive, the heartbreak of rejection. The feeling that this is how you will feel forever, the crushing weight of sadness despite knowing that this is just part of growing up.

Fortunately my son is the creative type, a drummer in a school band and a keen lyricist, so in the early morning he channelled his melancholy into a set of song lyrics and sent them to his bandmate and best friend.

And maybe he hasn’t fallen into the wrong crowd. Maybe he’s right where he needs to be, for his friend responds with Are you okay? You sound really depressed and You can always talk to me if you need someone, and as we arrive home and get out of the car I realise that whilst I might not recognise the shape of his world, I know one thing: that it’s okay to grow up and make mistakes, as long as you have the right people around you.

And then, in the centre of the exhibition, at the nucleus of the portraits, there hung a canvas which was not like the rest.

It was an abstract miasma of black and grey, jagged paint strokes, great sweeping brushmarks of red and white coming together like a tempest above the ocean. In the centre of the image a great howling monstrous face emerged as if from the dark and cloudy sky surrounded by vivid reds and oranges and the silhouettes of raven-like birds in frantic flight. Large slashes of paint rose here and there in vertical lines like great towers and the artwork was chaotic and tumultuous and full of anger and the face had ice blue eyes and it was then she knew that this was not the work of Gabriel Crow at all and when she turned she saw him watching her.

She walked through the small gathering of people who sipped cheap champagne and remarked at the powerful nature of the pieces and at no time did she break her gaze from him and he walked a few steps towards her too and they faced each other in the centre of the gallery as visitors milled about around them.

“It’s you, isn’t it,” she said quietly, and felt the urge to reach out and place a hand on his cheek but did not.

He nodded once, slightly. “It’s me.”

“I said I would never see you again.”

He gave a cynical smile. “That’s not really up to you, is it?”

She feared she would never be free and felt like bursting into tears but remained composed and instead turned and looked towards the large work at the centre of the wall.

“Is that how you feel?”

“Yes.”

“All of the time?”

“Yes.”

“And these people,” – she waved a hand in an arc across the width of the wall – “are they all your victims?”

He was silent for a second or two. “So far, yes.”

She turned and looked at him imploringly. Her eyes searched his for any sign of recognition, of remorse, of the man she had loved but she found none. “This isn’t you.”

“I don’t even know who ‘me’ is, anymore,” he responded, and his voice was firm yet tinged with sadness. “I am whoever I choose to be and everywhere I go destruction seems to follow.”

She was unsure whether to ask the question for she feared the answer but took a breath and blurted it out before she lost her nerve. “The riot…was that you?”

He nodded and did not blink.

“People died, Daniel.”

“I’m not Daniel.”

“People died.”

Now he blinked, but just once, and said nothing.

She dropped her hands by her side, exasperated, verging on angry, trying not to raise her voice. “Why did you do all this? For me? What’s the message here? What do you want me to do with this?”

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just a record of a moment in time. I wanted to give you just a flavour of what it is like to be me. You don’t need to do anything with it; I’m not even sure it is for you.”

She sighed in frustration and her eyes brimmed with tears. “Well…great,” she said.

“I know this isn’t me,” he said, after a few moments. His voice was quiet but it cut through the murmur of the room and she frowned as she listened, “but it can’t be controlled. I can’t stop it. I’m not sure I want to stop it, most of the time.”

“Have you not considered what you’ve done to these people?” she urged, and behind her the portraits looked out at the room.

“Yes. But most of the time I don’t care.”

A tear escaped and she wiped it away with a fingertip. “You are completely lost.”

“I think so. I should go now.”

He went to look away but she placed a hand quickly on his chest and he turned back and she said, “Wait – don’t go yet.”

He looked at her. She could see from his eyes that it was still him.

“Daniel – whoever you are. Listen to me. Do not trust Doctor Royce, okay? She is not your friend.”

“We’re working together, testing my limits.”

Hannah shook her head. “She’s out for herself,” she insisted, “trust me. She is not trying to help you; she’s trying to manipulate you. Please, listen to me.”

He said nothing.

“I don’t know what is going on inside you. But you have to believe me,” she urged. “Doctor Royce is not your friend.”

He looked at her for a moment longer and blinked and his eyes flitted away and he looked into the middle distance for a second or two as if in thought and then he looked over her shoulder and his eyes turned from blue to dark brown and the artist looked upon the young woman before him in bemusement and she in turn thumped a palm softly on his chest and muttered “Fuck,” and turned and left.

I had to build up the courage to hold your hand for the first time. Walking through city streets on our way back to the hotel after a night out, just a week or two into our relationship. It is such a simple act, to extend my hand and hold yours, but my heart is pounding. Eventually I pluck up the courage, and we walk hand in hand in the cold blue of the night, in silent excitement.

You place your hand on my leg as I drive. I tense my thigh and you squeeze playfully. I rest my hand over yours and rub my thumbtip over your knuckles.

Walking. It doesn’t matter where: along streets, through forests, over hills. We have our own way of holding hands: I gently trap your little finger between my index and middle fingers. When one of us needs to let go, we squeeze the other person’s hand first. It means I love you.

She caught him watching her and smiled at him. Her auburn hair was naturally curly and it was pulled away from her forehead by a thick headband and a dash of freckles spread across the bridge of her nose and she wore a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves and a pair of denim dungarees and looked every inch the artist.

“What do you think?” she asked, and spread her hands towards her work as if presenting it to him and her eyes sparkled a little.

He lied. “Wonderful,” he said. “Thought-provoking.”

She scoffed. “It’s rubbish,” she said, “in every sense.” They laughed and she approached. “Let’s take a look at yours, then, if you’re so great.”

The warehouse floor was well lit thanks to the large, arched windows where each square of glass was held delicately in a criss-cross of black frames. The walls were bare brickwork and they held the scars of past lives: patches of chipped and worn bricks, concrete columns grey like bones, rusted iron hoops and hooks protruding here and there, speaking to times long past; the heyday of this place, where it bustled with industry and workmen and grime and these bricks echoed with the sounds of machinery and trade. Now, it held only artists who seemed to revel in poverty and find meaning in their craft.

Her name was Kelly and his was Gabriel and he watched her face intently as she rounded the partition between them and looked at his work.

“This is different to what you usually do,” she said.

Over the past few days whilst he had inhabited Gabriel he had been using oil paints and several canvases were propped up on easels and against the wall before them, a variety of sizes, but each one holding a portrait. The features were intentionally unclear, blurred, uncertain; they looked squarely at the viewer with blank expressions. There was an Asian man, a woman with braids, a police officer. More people, all of them vague, barely discernible.

Kelly stood in front of the portraits and studied them in silence, one by one. She seemed intrigued but said nothing but instead pointed to a blank canvas which was larger than the others.

“Another portrait?”

He chuckled wryly. She was giving nothing away. “Maybe,” he said. “I was considering something different.”

She turned and looked at him and her face held a playful expression he could not fully read, and when she walked past him to return to her station her finger traced across his back. “I look forward to seeing another face,” she said sarcastically, and he laughed and wondered whether what the history was between them both.

This canvas was reserved for work other than portraits and he had secured some exhibition space at a local gallery for the following evening where he would display his work and he knew that they had sent an invitation out to their mailing list – GABRIEL CROW: REVEALED, in a bold, impactful font against a background of his face, half of which was cast in complete shadow and the other in bright light – and he hoped fervently that the mailing list recipients included Hannah.

The damage from the riot was extensive and costly. The police had eventually dispersed the hysterical crowd using rubber bullets and water cannon, but not before three people had died, crushed under the boots of their fellow demonstrators as they surged towards their violent ends. Photographs online and in newspapers showed the once-grand façade of the council building now mostly gutted by fire, black soot streaking the stonework above blown-out windows like mascara. They showed the broken remains of the statue, the head separated and face-down on the ground. They showed the shattered windows of nearby shops. The article said that Andy Harmann was looking at several years in prison for inciting hatred and manslaughter; the Government was opening an inquiry. The houses would still be demolished, and new development would still proceed. He tore these pages from the newspaper and laid them on the studio floor where the oilcloth could not reach to protect the floor.

He heard Kelly curse as she dropped a stack of paper cups and he stood in front of the canvas and lifted his paintbrush. Six hours later, by the soft glow of an industrial pendant light and the amber lamplight from the street outside, with the rest of the floor in darkness, he made the finishing touches to this focal piece.

Hannah stood at the mirror the following evening and applied the last of her mascara. Following Daniel’s funeral she had moved out of her parents’ house and moved back into the apartment and for the first few days she refused to move any items which belonged to him. His toothbrush had remained propped in the holder by the sink; his clothes stayed in the drawers; she even struggled to pick up the remote control for the television, knowing that the last time it had been touched it had been by his hand and he had placed it down on the coffee table before leaving for the last time on that fateful night. His pillowcase smelled of him; a glass by the kitchen sink still bore traces of his lips if she raised it to the light and looked carefully.

But since the day that a young girl with braids and blue eyes had called the word Squirrel to her across a crowded market she had become so uneasy that she had collected all his possessions and now stored them in a box under the bed, and it was on this bed that Alex now lay in his underwear and he called to her.

“What time do you think you’ll be back?”

“I don’t know. Not late.”

“Mmhmm.”

She did not respond. Since that evening in the market her relationship with Alex had become strained, fraught, troubled. She could not help but pull her hand away when he touched it; her kisses were shallow and with tight lips and without feeling. He had noticed her sore, pink eyes the day she had spoken to Daniel at Dr Royce’s office and when she would not tell him why she had been crying he had become cross and frustrated and left the apartment for two hours without any indication as to where he was.

She emerged from the bathroom in a stylish black jumpsuit wearing large hooped earrings and slipped on a pair of silver heels and took a matching bag from the bed. She kissed Alex on the forehead and he looked taken aback and slightly dissatisfied and she took her keys from the kitchen counter and left for the gallery.