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elsewhere, although several local people complained of still hearing them at night, no doubt another dream. Could this have driven one or more of them to commit some atrocity? None is mentioned on the web site. After the street was renamed Whitechapel it became known as a place of ill repute, which I take to mean the territory of prostitutes, like the London district with which it shares its name. Later the Ripper diary claimed that the author had seen his wife with her lover in the Liverpool location. By then it had developed side streets, some leading to Williamson Square, which wasn’t named after the builder of the tunnels; indeed, the city seems to have tried to ignore his legacy for decades. The square was surrounded by concert rooms, and the York Hotel contained a mock courtroom that satirised contemporary scandals until the trial of Jack Myprick saw the players and the hotel manager prosecuted for obscenity. The web site has left Frog Lane behind, and it’s the last of the very few references the search engine produced. My attention drifts until it snags on the address of the site. It’s www.ruinedcity.com.
    The search engine brought me straight to this inner page, and I scroll to the button that calls up the home page.The visual history of the growth of Liverpool ends with the devastated landscape occupied by fat question marks, which remind me more of giant maggots than of serpents now. Topics in the sidebar include LIVERPOOL AS IT WAS and AS IT WASN’T , not to mention AS IT SHOULD BE and AS IT SHOULDN’T besides AS THEY DON’T WANT YOU THINKING IT IS and even AS IT’S DREAMED …I’m intrigued by the last one, but it shows me only my reflection on a page that has yet to be created. The underlying notion of the site appears to be that much of Liverpool has been destroyed or buried, so that the developers have no idea what they may unearth, although I’m not sure my father has; the site reads more like notes for one, and not very coherent notes either. Theatres and music halls and circuses sprang up where or close to where the Pool had been, and he wonders why, since one of the first historians of Liverpool called the area “building land of the worst description.” Why were so many early streets built there? As I share my father’s puzzlement, the Beatles announce that they’d like to be under the sea.
    I’ve changed my ringtone, but it’s still designed to sound Liverpudlian. The display withholds the caller’s number. “Gavin Meadows,” I tell whoever’s there.
    “Liverghoul Tours?”
    “And High Rip Trips,” I assure her. “Pool of Life Walks as well.”
    “It’s the council, Mr Meadows. The Tourism Events Coordinator would like to see you.”
    “Is that what they’re calling her now? I hope I can still call her Rhoda.”
    “When do you think you’ll be able to come in?”
    “How about now? As soon as I can walk there. Fifteen minutes.”
    “I’ll pass that on.”
    I would ask to speak to Rhoda and confirm it if I didn’t suspect she’s attempting to cope with whatever changes herlatest job description has loaded on her. She’s enthusiastically disorganised but able to produce impressive paperwork. I shut down the computer and gulp the last of my lukewarm coffee. Having dumped the mug in the sink, I lock the apartment and tramp downstairs.
    After this morning’s rain the streets look immersed in a dream of reverting to streams and rivers. On Castle Street the remnant of the sanctuary stone—a roughly circular stub etched with four irregular parallel lines—glistens like a wet fossil embedded in the roadway. At the town hall I turn along Dale Street, another of the seven ancient thoroughfares. It’s full of lunchtime crowds, not least of smokers cast out of the ornate Victorian office blocks. Wide-eyed faces implanted in the frontages watch the pedestrians unobserved or, higher up, gaze in stony reveries at sights beyond my imagining. Opposite Cheapside a tower and a spire