5.10 pm – Friday

      Home. Home from school. Holidays. And here he was – out on the town, but on his own. As he walked through the early evening, bright with midsummer light, Ellis saw the city centre glowing like a far-off stage. But, although the sunlight was finding its way so confidently between hotels and banks, shops and offices, the city was threatened by a storm. To the north, between glassy office buildings, he could see bruised clouds, polished by a lurid light, rolling across the plain towards the town.

      Most of the other people in the street were going in the same direction as Ellis, probably making for the cinema complex that dominated the eastern end of the city centre. He looked with interest at the few faces coming towards him, half-hoping to see someone he recognised. However, as yet, he had not seen a single person he knew.

      I can always go to a film, he thought, and patted his back pocket as if the money there was a good-luck charm.

      The traffic lights changed. Glancing to the left as he crossed the street, Ellis saw the city council had installed new street lamps since he had last walked that way. Retreating, like precisely spaced blooms in a park garden, they rose on long green stems which curved elegantly at the top, then blossomed into hoods of deep crimson. Foley Street, announced brass letters on a black background. At the far end of the street he saw the old library he had visited regularly as a child, bracing its stone shoulders against a constricting cage of platforms, steps and orange-coloured piping. Wide dormer windows looked towards Ellis from under deep, dipping lids, tiled with grey slate. Several streets away, a new library, complete with a computerised issue system and a much-praised information-retrieval programme, would no doubt be working busily. But the old building was still there, transformed into apartments – one of them owned, he suddenly remembered, by country-dwelling friends of his parents. He guessed, looking at the scaffolding, that the company which had bought the old library must be adding a third floor to the original two.

      More changes, thought Ellis a little ruefully, although he also wanted the city to surprise him in some way – to put out branches … break into leaf … burst into gigantic laughter.

      Free, thought Ellis, and he might have skipped a little if it had not been such a childish thing to do. Well, not quite free. University next year – OK! OK! That was decided. But, after all, the university had a drama society