Apart from the traffic gently rumbling disinterestedly in the distance, the night was silent. Between each slap of raindrop on concrete was an overwhelming peace. Now and then she was distracted by a gargle from her famished stomach, but this soon passed when the feeling of empty loneliness returned.

Cold air clashed against her colourless cheeks, unabated for there were no cars to break the brutal breeze. Barren, the car park that imprisoned her was bound by coils of barbed wire. As tall as charred trees, the first target for the fastest bolt of lightning, the fences stood, caging her in with the fleas, filth, and vermin.

Shivering, sat still on the step, her shawl wrapped tightly around her now, she had abandoned the blood-warming activity of pacing: it made time feel never-ending. Instead, eyes-shut (except for when she needed to check that it was indeed just a wisp of wind rather than a rodent nibbling her knee… or a vampire) she meditated. Thoughts were not welcome now: they would only worry her. Waiting for the inevitable - it was inevitable, wasn’t it? - she flattened the frequent rises of anticipation or doubt by bringing focus back to the murky vapour that was her breath. Any time now.

A glimmer of stale green light crept across her diaphanous eyelids, and a wave of hope shone through her nervous system, from her toes up to her heart. Had he come?

“In. One, two, three… out.”

She cut the tsunami of illumination before it reached her brain. Still, it was worth a look…

Just one of those little rubbish-trucks with revolving brushes on the front, erupting faecal matter, foul odours and god-knows-what-else into the air. She felt sick. Abandoned.

“One, two, three… breathe.”

Pouring precipitously upon her pink poncho, pooling in puddles and pricking her ears with icicle sharpness, the pitter-patter pressured her shoulders until penultimately she perceived the palpitations of rage boiling, and finally picked herself up and decided to have some fun. The prescription for pain was pleasure.

Perhaps he would never come; perhaps the best way to push out the thoughts her capricious mind kept provoking her with was to play. All his absence meant was that there was no one to prohibit her passions.

Persuading herself that this was the proper thing to do, she pranced and skipped like a prairie pony in the perfectly pure slime of gutter-water. Pulling shapes and leaping through sprays as if she were pulling down priceless paintings in a proletarian riot of a princess’ palace, she stomped and splashed and filled her pockets and boots with the putrid rain.

Pity. Her cathartic performance was paused by the purr of an approaching engine. Probably just another head of the hydra of hope, here to haunt her with hollow expectation.

“Alice - you’re spoiling your pretty petticoat!”

“Papa!” Alice panted, overjoyed, and presently bundled into the back of the car.

It had been the longest ten minutes of her whole life.