There is a children’s play park nearby. The gates are shut but unlocked and they push open easily with a gentle squeak. Of course, at this time of night it’s deserted, and I know that I can sleep here until light. Time as it ticks on a watch is not as useful to me as how the light looks when it waxes or wanes. Daylight’s length is my clock, just as once it was for everyone. I think about earlier today, about Amit and the fruit now warm in my pockets. That at seventeen years old he thinks about me at all is a surprise. I’ve known him a summer, an autumn and now most of a winter. And now he brings me oranges when most people bring nothing but chaos and dirt.

The ground here is covered in woodchips, a decent mattress under the slide where it is dry, shaded from the elements by the wide tin slope. Before, when I knew too much about numbers and nothing about living, I tried to sleep in the tunnel, to use its seclusion, but the curve is death to sleep. Instead I crouch under the slide and tear out sheets of newspaper, rolling them into apple-sized balls. I can’t read the financial pages any more so the pink ones are the first to go. Each one is forced into the gaps in my coat sleeves, the wool inflating until I am like the Hulk. And then I do the same to the legs of my jeans. In no time air is trapped in pockets and my body warms – the paper clings on to the heat. The remaining balls I arrange into the carrier bag from Amit’s oranges, and convert into a pillow. I lay the oranges by my head because the scent of them comforts me…

Continue reading the extract here…