You were led to expect a road, a river, a boat, a gate, a guardian. All were supplied, though none was what you’d imagined. The road was indistinguishable from many of the sidewalks you’d so often trudged along: poured concrete, dirty in the usual way—weathered chewing gum, fresh spit, the odd dog dropping. Your feet were tired—whose shoes were you wearing?—but there was no place to sit down. The river, when you came to it, was a canal, stagnant with algae and floating plastic bags. A shabby houseboat was moored there, but no path led down to it. Instead the sidewalk took you across a massive iron bridge, painted grey. After that came a red brick wall that went on for a long time. It had posters stuck onto it—a play was being advertised, or else a film—the same poster, over and over. They showed a woman’s face with a surprised expression, her hand raised as if in self-protection, with big lettering in blue and orange and lines of smaller print: favourable quotations from the newspapers, no doubt, but somehow you couldn’t read them. In addition to the posters there were names spray-painted on the brick—no one you knew—and hot-pink symbol-writing that suggested the twisted-balloon animals made by clowns at children’s parties.

At last came the gate. It had a door, a steel door set into the brick wall. It was dented, as if people had been kicking at it with heavy boots. The guardian was leaning against it. He had the look of a man who’d been sleeping rough for some time. Old jeans, stubbled face, broken sandals; a torn rucksack by his feet.