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walking forever trying to find it. You know it’s there, you’ve seen it twice. Once when you were a kid, your parents brought you to the big smoke as a sixth birthday present — Movies! Lollies! New shoes! — and in the process of playing Happy Families you walked into a fine example of a shoe shop, an honest-to-god cobbler, tucked just off a side street of a side street of the main thoroughfare. Okay, sure, you were a bit lost, and it wasn’t the shop you were really looking for, but you didn’t want to think about the things lurking just around corners, those jeers. You admired the cobblestones shining like quartz, and a leather-bound face all glittering eyes and sparkling teeth — auspicious, not animal — as you were fitted with a new pair of shoes.
    Your parents didn’t think anything of hand-made, perfectly fitted shoes back then. That was when they thought you deserved them. Now, fitting in has a whole new meaning. You take any size 11 when you can find it.
    Despite the welcome from the cobbler, your harried parents could feel the lurk in that street. They were relieved to discover on escape that when they looked back one last time there was nothing but a tired black alley even shadows could not put to rest.
    You hurried on but never forgot the glimpse of warm brown leather, the flash of rouge, the single clack of a heel, the inch of white linen beckoning around the next corner like the crook of a finger.
    Those shoes never got thrown away though you grew out of them. They never scuffed, never kissed dirt, never showed a dent. They were deliciously handmade even though the cobbler took them off the shelf that very day you walked into the shop. Those shoes had been waiting for you.
    You’ve never had a pair of shoes like them since.
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    The second time you saw that strange spot was on a map.
    You love maps, devour them for breakfast. They are required reading, more than the obituaries. You know villages you’ll never visit, towns that are a mystery within their grids, cities that are only but a dream within tourist snapshots, all by their maps. You can’t go to them, so they come to you.
    You know where the public toilets are in Dusseldorf and all the subway stops in Moscow. You could find a fetish shop in Anchorage or an angling shop in Buenos Aires. And you know the location of every shoe shop in every major city, plus some of the specialist cobblers in the outliers.
    You eat maps, make them ash like you burn shoes. There is a science to it, but no one knows maps, lives within them, like you do.
    That second time you see your alleyway of quartz and rouge and white linen you find it on Google Maps, satellite view to be precise. It’s not there on Street View, but you would know that roof anywhere, even though a six year old would never have been tall enough to get a glimpse of those red tiles and bricks mottled with lichen.
    It’s the Right Place, because the map smells like leather.
    Staring at your computer screen, you wonder if it’s the scent of a workmate’s three-yearly investment in new shoes or the stench of your boss’ mid-life crisis. New Shoes — even yours never smell that unused — is over the other side of the partitioned floor, and your boss is lovingly caressing his jacket, pants and car seat elsewhere.
    Somebody’s laughter jolts you, your eyes refocus. You flush, as usual, even though the laughter is not meant for you. It never is in the kindest sense — at, not with.
    Fingers stumble on the keyboard, then move faster. Someone is always keenly aware of your productivity. They’re also the same people who are incredulous about the amount of walking you do. Something about twice as much to be taken half as seriously always skips through your mind.
    You finish the job, a gaudy attractions pamphlet avec map for an upcoming mountaineering conference. It’s how you came to be Googling local shoe shops, as if you really needed to. It’s a no-brainer really, the graphic design and