He went over to his file cabinet, unlocked it and reached into where he’d put the report. It didn’t seem to be there. He went through the files one by one. It wasn’t there. It made no sense. Had he taken it out? It had to be somewhere. It couldn’t have just disappeared.

It was noisy; certainly not the library quiet he knew from back home... Little children were laughing, shouting – piercing the air like parakeets – in the CHILDREN’s section, a designation he’d never come across before and was sorry to see in a library. They weren’t singing were they?

Doubles of desks faced each other in groups of four, the workers seated with stacks of files in front of them and separated from their colleagues opposite by make-do dividers... Except for laminated notices the walls were bare. The whole room was fluorescent, without any shadow, and felt temperature-controlled. The windows were closed, to the world.

He stopped at a sign in someone’s front garden. PLEASE DON’T STOP AND SMELL OUR ROSES. Why would anyone have a sign like that? Tris said to himself. He was constitutionally unable to cruise by a rose without wanting to inhale its fragrance.

‘Have you heard that Bee Gees album, Tris, that’s just come out?’

‘It’s great.’

‘I agree. “There’s a light…” ’ Banno half sang. ‘Pops into my head. It’s the beginning of one of the songs. I can only remember the early part.’

He saw that familiar hedge ahead. He neared it, as always, in anticipation of its sweetness; but as often as he’d passed it, he still hadn’t identified its scent.

Had Banno kept his own counsel – like an injured baseball player who maintains his tough façade by refusing to rub –

The door was open; wonderfully, church doors were always open. Tris walked in, and down the middle aisle. He remembered the church as being dark and dreary. Now it felt light and airy.

‘Do you know about minium?’
‘ “Minium?” ’
‘Yeah. I’ve always liked it. It was a poppy red colour used for the paragraph signs and capitals in medieval manuscripts?’
‘I never heard of that.’
‘I thought you were a proofreader,’ she smiled. ‘They’re in those beautiful colours with those beautifully shaped letters.’

He doubled back up Crescent Crescent and turned the corner into what was usually that warm bath of the familiar shops of his everyday walk

As he walked, the looming gloaming cast a gloomy light on the low cloud bank...

He doubled back up Crescent Crescent and turned the corner into what was usually that warm bath of the familiar shops of his everyday walk…