It was then that I realised I had been staring at an empty mug for quite a while, so I pulled myself up and tiptoed into the kitchen. There was a dull thunk as I set my mug down in the sink, and then silence, or as silent as it gets in the city. Even if you stopped breathing and were as still as a statue you could hear the white noise of the cars below, a world waking up, that that filled the flat so comfortably.
My jacket was hanging over the back of a chair so I leaned over the table and felt in the pocket for the slim, silver cigarette case I got for my eighteenth birthday. I pulled out two Benson & Hedges and handed one to Gennie. We both leaned out over the balcony and stared at the city. It wasn't a blanket of grey, or a colourless maze. The flat was in the old part of town, above Intes (the coffee shop I worked at), where all the shops were in restored historical buildings. Like the flat, it used to be a city council office block. It wasn't a bad flat, although sometimes the other tenants made a bit too much noice. It was mostly penniless students living up there since the university was only a block away. At one point there had been seven people living in the two-bedroom flat next door, and from the constant arguments you could hear through the thin walls you could tell it wasn't comfortable in there. That was the smallest out of the twelve flats that had been squished into the old council office block, our flat had three bedrooms even though there was only the two of us living there full time, occasionally - if money was tight - we'd board some desperate person in the spare room, but mostly we used it as a studio.
photo credit - chrissie white
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