When they finally arrived in Rochdale, it didn’t look any better than anyplace else. Than Liverpool. Just a smaller version. Just shrouded in rain that apparently never let up. Victorian. Dinosaurs. My ass.

A few weeks earlier Hannah would have thrown herself to the ground and kissed it like the pope, and her parents would have laughed. Now she found herself with a completely absent father and had to motivate him while pretending she knew what to do.

Using Google Maps, they walked down the main street, which was empty and terminated in a residential development that had apparently been expunged of actual residents. Hannah rang the bell of the super.

A fat old man, parentheses thirty-five, opened the door and, if you were to attribute anything to the open fly of his pants, had probably been interrupted while visiting a pedophilia site. The super took them to the lower level of the building—and just look at what they’d been able to do with a simple cellar. The rooms were painted in neon colors, laid with wood-grain linoleum, fitted with Wi-Fi and cable TV. A team of well-compensated city planners had hit on the idea to address overcrowding in the metropolitan area. It had turned out terrific. Windows—well, okay, there were no windows, but what was there to see outside anyway?

“When the furniture arrives…” said her father. It didn’t seem to matter to him where they were or why. And what furniture, anyway?

“Here’s the communal kitchen,” said the super, showing them a communal kitchen. There was a refrigerator where each resident could put their lockable food container, a gas stove that could be operated with a cash card. Same for the laundry machine, “here’s where you get the cards for warm water, and here,” said the super, “are the cards for the TVs,” which were already installed next to the beds in each room. “You have to put money on them. Good day.” Said the super, then he went back to the people he loved.

“Well at least there’s a TV,” said the father, dropping himself onto the bed. A dust of old skin particles danced in the fluorescent lighting, and Hannah was too dulled to come up with a way out.

She could try to get the ball rolling. Get flowers, a poster of a horse, and sheets. Or say: “Hey, come on, we’ll go register at the welfare office so we can get vouchers for the soup kitchen.” Or: “Let’s go explore the city. Dinosaur museum, cafés, whatever else. We can hang out and meet friends.” Or: “I saw some great thrift shops, we could go check them out.”

It didn’t matter.