It looked like rain again. She saw the same grey skies and precipitation that she’d seen every day on opening the iron and glass doors that provided access to the small space the realtor had laughingly described as a ‘spacious balcony’.

All it had done was rain, every day since she’d arrived. It wasn’t cold, at least. If evenings were a little chilly, she’d found a shawl in one of the cardboard boxes of clothes that littered one corner of the space. She was nominally calling that her bedroom, since it was where the bed had ended up.

The apartment, like so much else in her life at that moment, was new. New to her, anyway. The echoing space had once been a busy warehouse floor in the middle of a flourishing industrial city. Times had changed, and now the area was somewhat gentrified. It was the spot, now, where bohemian minded folk with enough money chose to lay down their hats for a while, to paint or write or sculpt, until the money ran out.

From the kitchen, the aroma of fresh coffee drifted, languidly.