We walked the earliest edge of Sunday, winter dark; streets lined up with standstill cars, silver, grey, and black, and white; while the ever-distant sun, then further still, was slowly breaking into shining. The town was quiet, gleaming; the rows of tenements - awash with sky. And we rarely chanced upon a person, save the stocking-wrapped, shadows without bodies, and that nude and mouthless one. We turned into a narrow lane past the power station, the mute red lights of chimneys looking down at us. We reached the concrete halfpipe of the dried-out canalside. And listened out for it. To disappear. For that.