eyes, but before he could think of what to say next she’d pivoted, hurried away, had left his jaw hanging loose like a dead animal. Now, in the cold sober light of the street, the water traced rivulets down his face, matted his hair in plastic peels against the clamour of his skin. A symphony sung triumphant, of overflowing drains and trickling cascades of water, tumbling down roads and from trees and across gardens and down bricks and through pipes, He had tumbled through the unmerciful evening, in the tangle of streets pastmatchstick-box houses,with the energy of thememory of the smile turning his legs to clockwork. Not looking (but then neither had the stranger), he brushed a briefcase and the office worker turned slightly to face him: a split second of apologetic incisor-laced smile.That same smile; it whispered in the breezes that washed across the tarmac and brick, it jumped over picket fences and across dinner tables and unwrapped presents, lurched over the inspiring confidence of drinks, melted in the streets and swam through shuffling queues. It was everywhere, throttling Leonard with such a horrific compound of outrage. Thinking with savage speed, Leonard had taken one last corner and collapsed with a deliberate precision of drama. It was enough, not too much, and he smiled as his hand flailed for the fence and brought him swinging round, his back clattering into the wooden slats, his legs drawing up to his face. And a drop of rain crashed over Leonard’s head; a shower followed. tracing its way across windowpanes too. His face was stone and metal with the cold.
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