His back-pack was hurting his shoulders. It had too much in it. But he had wanted to escape and still take as much as he could with him. He had been travelling for nearly thirty hours. He had been walking out of the city for an hour, now, looking for somewhere anonymous to stay. His feet hurt. He stank. He hadn’t known which direction he was walking in – any one would do. He didn’t know which suburb he was in. All he knew was that most of the houses he could see had obviously been built before the First World War. On the central gable of the five houses making up the terrace he was walking past, moulded in plaster, was the name “Majorca Flats”. There was a small placard in the window of the fourth house – Room to Let. The lettering was in red, which had faded in the sunlight. It was just what he wanted. Probably there was something wrong with the room – or the writing on the placard wouldn’t have faded so.
