A WEEK CAME AND WENT. I walked through the wide white aisles of the Aygros Supermarket, buying yoghurt, cheese and milk that looked nothing like the yoghurt, cheese and milk from home. Everything was fattier, sweeter, saltier, bigger. At university I filled my schedule with Biology of Cells and Organisms and Genetics and The Evolution of Life. In my first lecture I learned that millions of years ago Aybourne and most of the surrounding landmass had been below water. The professor explained how the ground had been covered by a thick layer of limestone formed by billions of tiny little algae skeletons.

‘Think about it,’ he continued eagerly, ‘if the water was still here, only a few church spires and the City Hall clock tower would reach above the surface.’

Afternoons I spent with Franziska on the lawn outside Earth Sciences.

‘Are you enjoying your factory?’

‘Yeah, I like it,’ I answered.

‘It seems really strange. You said there are no walls?’

I picked at the sugar on my napkin from a cinnamon doughnut. The sugar crystals stuck to my fingertip.

‘Only thin plasterboard. It’s weird, but it’s ok.’ I put my finger in my mouth and crushed the sugar between my teeth.

‘I don’t think I could live like that.’

‘Me neither, really,’ I answered.

But I did live in this factory, and I’d started to like it. I enjoyed listening to Carral’s sounds, how she shuffled across the kitchen floor or dried off with a towel after she’d showered. From my bed I could hear her pee at night, a faint, muted trickling against the toilet bowl, which made me imagine, half-asleep, thin flowing golden ribbons.

Gradually I got used to listening to the factory and Carral and the whole district, and one morning I didn’t wake up when the Aygros Supermarket opened. I no longer heard the cars in the car park at night. And in a similar way I grew accustomed to all of Aybourne, and I no longer missed the taste of brown bread and liver paste, and I poured the right amount of milk in my tea without thinking about how I didn’t used to drink tea with milk back in Norway. When I walked towards the kitchen table and sat down with my milky tea, the floorboards creaked just as they did in response to Carral’s pattering feet.