Who is sitting by the river. It’s dangerous by the river, but at least this way he can keep an eye on it. Under control. He can react. That way the fear is bearable. The fear he’s had since the flood. Although—fear doesn’t adequately describe his fundamental feeling of discomfort. Roger has lost his inherent human confidence. The self-conception of existence that protects one in daily life. Roger reckons with the very worst at every moment. Since that night, when he still had a little house on the sea, up north. The night when he was watching television and suddenly had wet feet, the night when the water slowly rose and all the neighbors stood on the street until their ankles, knees, thighs were submerged, it’ll recede. It didn’t. Then came the helicopters. Since then he starts to scream whenever he hears the whoosh of rotors, since then he can’t get the vision out of his head of the life that sank in the flood. For years the residents of his cute little town on the sea had resisted. Had trekked to London with cardboard signs, protested against carbon emission trading, warned of global warming; they had no idea what exactly it all meant, or whether it really was the cause of the changes in their world, but somebody had to bear the blame. All these boring, abstract things that mostly sex-starved old ladies demonstrated about, things that gave them a purpose in life before they were composted, all of it had burrowed into Roger’s cells. That and the knowledge that people had destroyed him and his home, his life, just because they could, was comparable to what people experience during a war. The loss of faith in oneself. And the world. So Roger sat by the river. He knows that he is nothing. Insignificant. With no rights. With no purpose. From afar, noises—

HANNAH

Puts on music.