This is the remote corner, the flipside. This is where ugliness is stored. Shadows are thrown around erratically and I wander around the area searching, but searching for what? Next to an enormous oak tree, the excavator stands frozen as if enchanted. Rust mixes with tree trunks, but the wild carrot is blooming. Long, glistening threads surround the tractor. A chain saw in the distance. Between the sleepers, ladders and roof tiles stands a sauna on wheels. It looks new. I peek inside and see that the door on the other side is open. Squeezing myself past decaying cages, I notice that the grass near the entrance is trampled. It smells cosy inside. The little stove is beckoning. 

I do understand – I would hide here myself. 

I leave the door open, the chain saw is drawing closer. A horsefly hovers around me. There is a rustle coming from above. And then with an enormous roar, the old oak tree drops a branch right in front of me. Moss is flying everywhere, dust covers my shoes. Be off, you!

In the illuminated room just across the road, I see a woman sitting on a bed. She eats. Nuts, crisps. Everything is spread out on the duvet, and she holds each nut as if it were a pill. She picks and chooses them carefully. She is not drinking, therefore she is eating. The rehab is just across from my house, I can look straight in. Apparently she doesn’t like drawn curtains. And then all of a sudden she wipes everything off the bed in a wild, impatient manner and switches of the small fluorescent bed side lamp. I eat another cookie, hidden behind my laptop. She never drew the curtains.

It smells of cigarettes, the white shop stuffed with hoover bags. The fumes are dripping from the ceiling. A chubby man with a shiny head appears from behind a door at the back. Dried sweat has left a drawing on the shoulders of his dark blue cotton jumper. A salty jumper. His fleshy fingers smile when they finger through a folder with all sorts of papers. He finds what I’m looking for.

I hear her coming from afar, her voice is shrill, scratched and full of dents. Parents with kids fill the street, it’s drop-off time. Everyone can hear the words she throws into her phone, and we are all looking. Despair hangs from her shoulders but her feet keep walking. Big steps. Her little son, with the blue backpack neatly on his back, tries to keep up. She doesn’t look back to see if he succeeds and the little boy crosses the road without looking, his eyes only on his mom. We all check whether there is no car coming. A cyclist stops for him, thankfully. She is now almost shouting: don’t say that! I don’t believe you! Don’t say it!