She’d seen old people and drunks sitting on benches in the park as if waiting, she assumed, to speak to someone, anyone. She noticed their loneliness that seemed to create a grey aura around their shoulders like an invisible warning to others, ‘Do Not Approach.’

Pity would wash over her for an instant as she hurried past, always busy, forever preoccupied but now she sits on a bench in that same park, mist seeping out around her shoulders.

No one has passed by on this chill early morning apart from a man in his business suit who looked at his watch and cast a quick glance in her direction where she sat fingers tapping chipped, dirty nails on a plastic bag full of empty lager cans.