Okay, so it's just an image on a two-dimensional screen, but he can move it around, sketching invisible lines on the mousepad. London. A large, terraced house in N19. It looks much the same. as it did back in 1981. The software won't let him but, in his mind's eye it's easy to walk in through the front door, to make his way upstairs to the second-floor flat they've just rented.
The sun is pouring through the window, through the rainbow sticker they'd recently bought from the local wholefood shop. They were feeling optimistic. Right now, he's alone. His other half is out, working an early shift. From where he stands, he can see the sky and the rooftops of the flats opposite. He can hear the noise of invisible traffic going past, two floors below. The noise is less unpleasant than he'd expected. It's quite comforting in fact. Within a day or two of moving in, he'd come to realise that when he heard it, he knew he was at home. The hum of the cars. The roar of the double-decker buses. Sometimes he opens the window and leans out, looking down on it all and smoking a cigarette. He never smokes indoors. The landlord and landlady, who live downstairs, had only wanted non-smokers but they were young and very easy-going. They'd all hit it off immediately. They were more like friends. They all even take it in turns to cook a shared meal every week. The rent is cheap.
He takes his brown corduroy bomber-jacket down from the back of the door. He feels in the pocket for his cigarettes. Twenty Embassy. Well, a half-full box. That should see him through. Matches. He makes his way back down to the street.
This is the way it was.
He turns right, towards the Archway Roundabout. As he does so, he lights his first cigarette of the day. He crosses a side-road, Prospero Road. He didn't know Shakespeare's The Tempest back then, so didn't associate the name with his favourite Shakespeare play. He carries on round the bend, past the privet hedges which conceal the tiny gardens of the terraced houses. On his left, the long, low block of council flats is still there. As he clicks the mouse, moving on further down the street, he is surprised to see that so little has changed.
At the roundabout, he negotiates the pedestrian crossings that take him across the Holloway Road. It strikes him that he has never, neither back then nor since, actually been inside the Archway Tavern, the pub that still stands marooned on the island, in the centre of the swirling traffic. He turns down Junction Road. He walks past the long shop windows of the Co-op supermarket. Once, when he'd been walking past on his way home from work, he'd had to cross to the other side. A bus had lost control as it approached a bus-stop there and careered into the shop front. There were shards of plate-glass everywhere. The pavement and the shopfront had been red with blood. He'd never seen so much blood. The next day, the windows had been covered over with sheets of plywood.
He finishes the cigarette, dropping it between the bars of a drain cover, keen not to burn the soles of his Doc Marten boots. He feels sure there is a way through the pedestrian precinct opposite but the mouse won't take him there. All it'll do is shift the image from side to side. Figures in a blurred background do their best to create a 3D impression. A virtual no-go zone. The images are clearly from a few years ago as a number of pedestrians are wearing face-masks. He carries on down Junction Road towards Tufnell Park. When he reaches the pet shop he turns right, up Bredgar Road. It's a long, straight road lined on both sides, at first, with more low blocks of flats. He passes Hargrave School, an imposing Victorian building which he has no memory of. He has a vague memory, though, of St Peter's Church, now converted into flats, which stands at the top of the road, at the junction with Dartmouth Park Hill. He remembers how, seen from further down the hill, it plays a significant part in the skyline.
He turns left. He's almost there. To his surprise the building's still standing. He half-expected to discover it'd been bulldozed to make way for some luxury development, but no. He still looks back on that first job with affection. He was often five minutes late although they tended to be tolerant, as he often left late, too. Five minutes was one thing; forty-five years, though, was quite another.
