He had passed the hordes of Christmas shoppers frantically dawdling on the city streets, minds now without thought, legs without purpose or direction. Why had they come ? What did they want ? They were now lost in some level of despair, blankly staring into the retailer’s windows. He was not one of them today.

Pushing onward, past the old town and it’s grand edifices that gleamed golden and white in the low winter sun, past the eager young students in their disheveled state of cool, past the unfashionable but affordable flats in grey and green disrepair, he reached the edge of town.

As he worked his way up the path of loose black rocks, he thought of the last time he had come here. He was a boy then and had not been alone.

The wind clawed at his face as he sat down exhausted upon the cold hard rocks of the hilltop. He took out the pontefract cakes that he had saved as some reward and looked out across the city that had been his home. Tomorrow he would be leaving, he had tried to leave before.