Jeff looks through the chain-link fence. In the litter-filled car park, weeds have pushed through the asphalt. Graffiti covers the shuttered shopfront and dirty gray walls like a rash – pink, blue and black daubs he can’t make sense of. Perforated steel sheets have been nailed over the tall windows. Above the shopfront is a large empty bracket, where the word BORDERS was once displayed in large shiny silver letters, and below that, in smaller italics, Paperchase.

‘Think of it as the equivalent of seven stab wounds to the abdomen,’ the surgeon had suggested, with a smile, after the operation. ‘So, you must take your recovery slowly. We’ll discuss the results in a month. See if further treatment’s necessary.’ Jeff’s pleased that, after three weeks, he’s able to extend his daily walk as far as the railway station. But why has he only just noticed what’s become of this site? Because I’ve never made time for anything except work, he thinks. Cycling from home to the station and back by the quickest route. He’d found time to see a doctor, though, thank God. Not that he believes in any God.

#

He’s always loved bookshops – portals into new worlds. Twenty years ago, on those weekends when he had custody of the kids, they spent long lazy winter Saturday afternoons at Borders. Fagin’s, Cranfield’s, and Ottakar’s at Centre:MK – they had all disappeared. But this gleaming three-storey superstore – a cornucopia of books, magazines and CDs – seemed different. It was going to defy the rise of online shopping. It was 2006 and the world seemed awash with money.

He was lucky, in those days, to find a parking space.

The three of them climbed the stairs to the coffee shop first. Alan, the eldest, wanted an Americano like his dad, while Sylvie asked for an Iced Mocha. Then they’d browse the shelves, knowing at the end of the afternoon he would buy each of them a book. It felt safe there. He could relax with a Jack Reacher or a magazine.

‘Stop right there!’

He was with Alan, choosing magazines near the entrance. He saw a security guard grab the arm of a gangly teenaged boy. Jeff had noticed the boy in the store before, sitting absorbed, reading in an armchair. Always science books.

There was something stuffed under the boy’s jacket. The guard triumphantly pulled it out.

‘Do something, Dad,’ Alan whispered. ‘He goes to my school.’

‘It’s okay,’ Jeff said. ‘He’s with me.’

The guard handed Jeff the book, shrugged his shoulders, and walked away. Jeff still remembers the teenager’s bewildered expression – and the dark key-hole shaped mark on the iris of his left eye.

He never saw the boy in the store again.

#

When did it close? 2009?

Jeff remembers the anesthetist saying, ‘You will wake up.’ The anesthetist’s face had loomed over him. There’d been a dark key-hole shaped mark on the iris of his left eye. Then everything went black.

But, of course, Jeff woke up. He’s awake now.