On my way out, I drift along the salad bar, glancing into the tubs of salad one by one, wondering why so many of them contain kidney beans.

*

Next, Queensgate Shopping Centre, starting with John Lewis – yes, I know this implies a certain poverty of the imagination but there’s something about these small expeditions that is incredibly exciting when you’ve been denied them so long, the mundane rendered thrilling by my long exclusion from it. Perhaps it is simply that I can’t quite believe the world is still as it was. My reality is my reality and yet, here it still is, the old reality, trundling along, which is both pleasing and offensive.

John Lewis seems to be on a lot more floors than I remember and none of them seem to be the ground floor. I go up and down from one department to another. Hundreds of lipsticks at the cosmetics counters. How did I ever choose? And what is it about our mouths anyway? The importance of our mouths, women’s mouths I mean – it isn’t because that’s what we use to speak, that’s for certain. When we paint our mouths we are advertising kisses, not conversation – and yet I never knew a man who wanted to kiss lipstick. Lipstick was a paradox, then, both an invitation and an obstacle. No wonder men can be so difficult sometimes – they’re just really confused. Looking at it all, I feel an ache of relief at how simple I am now: mere consciousness, it doesn’t come any more simple than that.

In the electronics department, there are vast televisions, all in a row, all showing the same shot of a whale swimming lazily through a deep but bright blue sea. The whale looks as though it has been swimming forever and has forever still to go, turning slowly from side to side in the luminescent water. Its head is slightly lifted, as if it hasn’t quite given up hope of seeing something that matters. I know how you feel, mate, I say in my head to the whale. Its multiple forms turn towards me on the screens and nod – slowly and graciously, the vast heads moving up and down in unison. We acknowledge each other, me and the whale. I wish the whale well and drift away.

Afterwards, I go downstairs to the shoe department and linger for a while, watching women slip their feet into heels as if they are trying on a dream of themselves in which they are admired and desired. There’s no need to hang around here – I could go anywhere and after nearly two years of being trapped, there’s a lot to explore. Each time I come out, I decide, I will go a little further, explore the town – sooner or later, something or someone is bound to jog my memory.