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By Root 457 0

the capital past the posters on the tube station walls advertising This Season’s Atonement and under the ads in the tube carriage with the picture of the kitchen bin with the speech bubble coming out of its mouth saying It’s My Right To Eat Tin Cans and the words beneath which said Deny Your Bin Its Rights. She’d gone for a walk between stations and seen St. Paul’s rise to the surface on the riverbank like a piece of old cartilage. She’d ridden a train through a place that looked like the future had looked when she was a child. Now she was walking up a hot summer street of beautiful buildings and shabby-chic houses trying to remember what Greenwich meant again, which was something to do with time. When she got to the right address, a child wearing a bright yellow dress over the top of a pair of jeans was sitting on its top step picking little stones out of a fancy border of pebbles at each side of the door. She was whistling a repetitive strip of tune a bit like the Judy Garland song from The Wizard of Oz and throwing the stones at a drain in the road, presumably trying to get them down the grate of it. The drain cover and the road around it were dotted with little white stones.

Hello, Anna said.

I’m broke, the child said.

Me too, Anna said.

Really? the child said.

Yes, Anna said. Almost totally. What a coincidence. Aren’t you hot in all those clothes?

Nope, the child said reaching up to the doorbell. Because I feel that I am not doing myself full justice if I don’t wear them all.

But it was a white woman, dressed in summer whites and beiges, who answered the door. She pushed the child to one side and held her hand out to shake Anna’s hand.

Genevieve Lee, she said. Call me Gen. Thank you so much for coming.

She led Anna into the lounge, still holding her by the hand. When she let go Anna folded her jacket and put it on the arm of the couch, but Genevieve Lee stared at the jacket there for an unnaturally long time.

I’m sorry. It makes me afraid, Genevieve Lee said.

My jacket does? Anna said.

I now have a horrible fear that people who take their coats off in my house might never leave my house, Genevieve Lee said.

Anna picked her jacket up at once.

I’m so sorry, she said.

No, it’s fine, you can leave it there for now, Genevieve Lee said. But as you can tell. We really are at the end of our tether with your friend Miles.

Yes, well, as I said, he’s not really my friend, Anna said.

I promise you, we can’t take much more of our oh you tea, Genevieve Lee said.

Sorry? Anna said.

Our Unwanted Tenant, she said.

Oh, I see, Anna said.

No. Oh you tea, Genevieve Lee said.

No, I meant—, Anna said.

Also, oh you tea spells out, Genevieve Lee said, which makes it what Eric, my husband, and I call a positive thinking exercise.

Genevieve Lee was currently a freelance Personnel Welfare Coordinator for people who worked in Canary Wharf. When they had problems, financial, emotional or practical, their companies could contact her and she’d tell them what kind of help was available in both the public and the private sectors.

As you can imagine, work’s been off the scale recently, she said. What are you currently doing yourself?

I’m currently unemployed, Anna said.

I can help you with that, Genevieve Lee said. The main thing is, it’s very, very important to talk about it. Here’s my card. What’s your field?

Senior Liaison, Anna said. But I’ve just given it up.

Gosh, given it up, Genevieve Lee said. Presumably something better on the horizon.

There’d better be, Anna said, or I may kill myself.

Genevieve Lee laughed a knowing laugh.

She told Anna that Eric worked at the Institute for Measurement and Control and that he’d be back at three.

The child, who’d followed them in, was sitting in the retro-modern armchair at the window, batting her bare heels off the front of the chair.

Stop kicking that, Brooke, Genevieve Lee said. It’s Robin Day.

Robin day? the child said. Today?

Brooke, we’re busy, Genevieve Lee said.

You would think robin day would be a day that it would make more sense to be nearer in time to Christmas,