‘I’m looking.’

‘Did you see many places?’

‘Yes, no one wants me yet though.’

‘Most people probably want someone they know, or someone who can’t just run off. You know, back to another country. That’s what my brother says anyway. But there’s a place on campus with listings. I can show you before I go.’

It was late in the day. Most of the students had gone home. The listings were hanging in the window of a café at the far end of the campus. Lots of handwritten notes formed a city map of index cards, showing the way to abandoned apartments, dusty bedrooms and old cars. Some included colourful drawings of cute cats or lively explanations for why a new tenant was needed. ‘Are you our dancing queen?’ it said on a note stuck in the middle, and another one read, ‘Desperately seeking YOU! (If you love cats.)’

One note stuck out, on the edge of the clump. It had no drawings, puns or patterns:

ROOM AVAILABLE IN LARGE W.HOUSE.
SHARE WITH 1 F.
.QUIET.

There followed an address and a phone number. The word QUIET, closed in by a full stop on either side, had an emphasis I liked. Quiet worked for me. I couldn’t imagine the other girl, only large rooms, unfurnished and uninhabited. And when I rang from the phone box by City Hall, the girl didn’t have a voice either, only a mechanical one from the phone company:

You have reached the answering machine of … Car-ral … John-ston. Please leave a message after the tone, or hang up.

While I listened to the mechanical voice, I saw a boy step through the City Hall garden, pass the sundial and head towards the phone box I was in. He was extremely skinny and an oversized windbreaker hung loose around his upper body. I stepped out of the phone box and started to walk down the street when I saw him turn towards me. He looked at me for a moment before he lifted his hands and put his index finger in a hole he had made with the fingers on his other hand.

‘How much?’ he asked while he continued to move the finger in and out of the hole. I felt myself become hot and cold at the same time, turned and started to walk the other way while I heard the boy laugh behind me. Then I heard another sound: the sound of someone retching. When I turned around the corner I saw him heaving into a bin. Afterwards he walked to a bench and sat there, calm and smiling, while he wiped his mouth.