The stairs are dark, the grey walls cold. Faded graffiti is smeared in bleached patches all the way down. He pushes the icy steel bar out of his block and into the bright of day. Altostratus clouds veil the sky. The sun’s dull, as if hidden behind ground glass. Geoff pushes his hands into the pockets of his denim jacket, hurrying along the black gravel path, slipping on the odd mud patch. It’s cold and he’s hunched against a growing breeze. The pop music’s louder, irritating. He turns the corner.

Egg-speckled columns, somewhat like motorway struts, are placed in a single-file line, spaced maybe four hundred metres apart, it’s difficult to tell. They stand high, towering over the building that contains his one-room flat by at least another half block, perhaps. Geoff understands last night’s need for loud machinery even as he marvels at how this was done. The columns hike across the shattered remains of the worn town, far into the greying distance. Between each T-shaped strut there’s an odd, shimmering trick of the light that reminds him of childhood, the translucent film of bubbles he blew as a boy.

He’s stunned to a halt by this seemingly insubstantial barrier. For years they’d threatened to build a wall and eject those who sought to destroy their way of life, to safeguard and protect freedom as if it were a stolen foreign jewel, seen but never touched. They made plans and held referendums, argued for and against although in truth there was never any question. And while London burned and terrorists murdered innocents, people grew ever more fearful. The iron will the city was so proud of grew brittle with rust. Only a matter of time before it snapped, fell away. Exposed to the elements, quickly corrupted from outside by political businessmen who barely lived in the city. And so that final vote, to expel not only foreigners but also the less wealthy, had been enough to make it keel and die. Those who’d voted against couldn’t imagine how right they were when they said the results might possibly last for ever.

He turns away. Not far from where he walks a lumbering group of pre-adolescents test the wall by throwing stones. The transparent material sparks and glimmers with each contact, a hissing snake. Stones chip into pieces and fall to the mud as though they’re striking concrete. Geoff wants to give the youths a dirty look, but instead he does his best to ignore them. Idle workmen see what’s happening and chase them away.