It feels good to lose myself in such a small activity as these little beads. To be in this non-space, to be in this insignificant town, doing this thing that doesn’t really matter. For a moment, earlier on the train on my way here, I considered just moving back, and staying in this state of no pressure and nothingness. I could get a job in a café and just keep changing jobs until I’d waitressed in all the cafés in Kent; then I could just move around the country in that way. Also, I checked and it turns out that my mum’s house, even though we had to get it completely empty and clean by a certain date for the landlord, hasn’t been rented yet. In fact, there’s no one even lined up to move in. It’s up on Rightmove now, with photos the estate agent took before we moved our things out. The pictures have my bed in them, my wardrobe, some of my clothes hanging on the back of my chair in front of my desk. Even the kitchen looks lived-in in those photos; it’s tidy, but our stuff is still everywhere and it looks, almost, like the people who live there might actually be humans who cook human food: there are ladles and wooden spoons in a pot on the counter that we used to heat our food before we got the microwave, which is in the corner, and there’s a ludicrous quantity of mugs stuffed into one of the cupboards with a glass front. In the living room, there are pictures of me growing up all along the mantelpiece: me in my school uniform, with my Mickey Mouse lunch box that I just took to school to fit in; at the zoo in the middle of a storm, smiling in front of a rain-drenched elephant. While I scrolled through those photos on the train, I had felt as though I could climb back into that old life through my screen. For a moment, that’s what I wanted to do.