Grime seemed to have been invented just for her. Don didn’t know who had invented it or from what components—that was the stuff of discussions between young men who were able to project an aura of invincibility by deploying insider terminology—

Don just knew the music sounded the way she wished to feel. Angry and dangerous. Grime stars had the best sneakers, chains, and cars. They were someone. They’d made it. They were heroes.

Grime played all day in the neighborhood. The music suited the attitude toward life. Though children wouldn’t talk about having an attitude toward life—it was just their life. When you’re grown-up you numb rising feelings with drugs, when you’re young you listen to music. And then numb yourself with drugs. Grime was raging, filthy music for children leading filthy lives. Don listened to grime in bed, in the bath, outdoors. The great outdoors.

So—

In front of the window a lamp, rain or something similar, or maybe the window was just dirty. The flat occupied the first and second floors. You could, if you had completely lost your mind, call the whole thing a town house.

A very, very small, shabby town house. It consisted of two small rooms with a view of an outdoor concrete seating area and a metal fence. Once while watching TV it occurred to Don that something was missing from all the foreign movies: metal fences. They existed in such manic frequency only in England. Every few meters. Red, green, blue, whatever, didn’t matter as long as it was fencing and it was metal. Every fucking thing was isolated from life by fences—schools, parks, kindergartens, fire alarms. It wasn’t clear whether they were supposed to make citizens feel safe, offering a sense of safe harbor in turbulent times, or they were just thrown up as colorful accents amid all the gray. Don wished for a fence around her bed to keep away her brother. To whom she wasn’t particularly close.

Beyond the fence, outside, there was a path along which, just a few meters from her window, other residents of the block moved as if they were using imaginary walkers. It was relatively dark, and oddly damp, but Don didn’t notice back then. That there was always a draft seemed normal. Her mother was still somewhat together, she did her best to play family, though it was a bit awkward, as if she were building a dollhouse out of mud.