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rose branches and up the walls. We had courgettes, culinary herbs, sunflowers for the oil. Two brown hens scratched around the
margins. When I went into the garden I first took a few moments to search for their warm brown eggs.
    Our house had been built before Greening, but the roof had been retrofitted with a green frame that grew herbs and sweet potatoes and tomatoes and lettuces. We had an apple tree and a solar
water reclamation system. The house was well-insulated and snug.
    We had everything we needed right here. And what we didn’t have we could buy from the shops in the town. Any reasonable, rightminded person would be perfectly happy here.
    Except what we didn’t have was any purpose beyond subsisting.
    The stepladder was in the community shed—none of our neighbors were using it this early, and nobody was signed up to use it until five. Having decided I would work on the roof garden, I
pulled out the ladder, rolled it home on its wheeled side, braced its foot pads, and clambered up. The overlay from my Omni helped me identify and pull weeds while avoiding the seedlings of
desirable plants. The pink and white valerian would take over everything if you let it. It was pretty, but as far as I was concerned it smelled like a cat. It could stay in the chinks of the stone
walls, where it belonged.
    As I worked, I tried to calm my mind—but I couldn’t help it. Over and over, I wondered again why Mam had left.
    Dad’s first wife, Katy’s mother, had died of a cancer the health service hadn’t been able to do anything for. After a while, he met and married my mam but she didn’t
stick around past my fifth birthday, and she’d never told us where she was going or sent word back that she was a alive.
    For a long time, nobody and no amount of rightminding could convince me it wasn’t my fault she’d gone. After a while, I’d started to accept it had been something inside her
that had driven her away. The realization had come about the same time that same something had begun to rear itself in my own head.
    I patted the last marigolds in among the tomatoes—organic pest control—and made my way back down the ladder. I folded it up and took it back to the community shed.
    Because I’d been thinking so much about the past, about escaping to it, I imagined what it would be like if we had our own ladder. Not to have to work around everyone else in the community
or sign up months in advance to work on the roof.
    I imagined every house on my street with its own step-ladder. Its own lawnmower. Its own hedge clippers.
    It was a little dizzying. So much stuff. Where would you keep it all?
    Wasteful. Like the airplanes and the food from far away and the internal combustion engines that used to race around the streets. You could see it all in old movies, which people used to buy on
disks made of polymer, in boxes made of polymer, and just pile up on shelves.
    It’s better to keep everything in the cloud. I know it is. It’s better to use only what you need, when you most need it, then put it back where everybody else can use it too.
    But is it really better to spend your whole life in comfortable purposelessness? All those people in those old movies, zipping around in their ocean-raising cars and their storm-causing
airplanes.
    They’re not like me. They all look as if they’re going somewhere.
    I went inside to shower, thinking I’d earned the use of a water ration now. Besides, if it rained again this afternoon, it’d help fill the roof tank. We’d be in pretty good
shape still.
    And I couldn’t stand the feeling of dirt and grease in my hair.
    •  •  •
    Showers are a good place for making life-changing decisions. The hot water seems to unstick the brain cells and if you cry, nobody can tell. Not even you, really. I probably
pushed my water ration a little, but I’d make up for it by not being here later.
    When I was clean, I made myself a cup of tea—worth importing, even in these times—and