Now Helen is hovering over a city. It could be Sydney, but she’s not sure. It’s neither cold nor windy, just very still, and down below there are people in offices, on trains, sipping coffee, talking into mobile phones, falling in love, falling out of love, trying on shoes in shops—alive because of an old woman, far away in England, who has recently adopted a mouse, turned vegetarian, broken the law, and gotten a library card . . . as though preparing to start her life all over again.
