Bleak January. A place that is appropriately called a Winter Garden. Full of absent people. I come and sit here everyday while I drink my takeaway coffee. I always take the lid off because drinking it through that tiny slot takes forever and makes coffee dribble down my chin.

‘Red socks’, sits on the bench opposite and looks handsome from a distance. But why is he wearing red socks? He’s deep in conversation with a Chinese girl who looks bored and takes sips from a bottle of Pepsi Max Lime that will be  warm by the time she finishes it. I wonder what he’s saying to make her look so listless. Occasionally she looks over as if to say, “please swap places with me.”

Between us, a mouse keeps running between flower beds. Backwards and forwards it goes and nobody takes any notice. This is a brave mouse that likes living under exotic leaves but can’t decide which is the best. I hope that the Chinese girl might notice the mouse and scream loud enough to stop ‘‘Red Socks’ talking for a moment. But she fails to see it because she is on the verge of falling asleep.

A well-dressed black boy comes over and asks if he can sit beside me. I tell him that I don’t own the bench and make room. He introduces himself and I immediately forget his name because he is from Nigeria and it sounds strange. “This is a cool place,” he says, and I suspect that he might be trying to pick me up.

I ask him what he is doing in this country and he says he came to study. I wait for him to say that he is a wealthy Nigerian prince and that he wants to give me ten thousand pounds if I give him my bank details. Instead, he says that he is doing a thesis on his country. “What do I know about Nigeria?” I disappoint him and say that I’m the wrong person to ask because I’m half-witted. He gets up and leaves and I realise that I could have said that I thought that everyone in Nigeria was a prince who wanted to give money away to people who provided their bank details.

A young guy walks by with someone who I presume to be his girlfriend. He’s devilishly attractive and I instantly dislike her. I consider getting rid of her by being the first person to commit a murder inside this winter garden with an impatient mouse, a guy who wears red socks, the bored Chinese girl, and a Nigerian who could have been a prince but wasn’t. 

When they pass, two scruffy fellows follow. One of them is explaining about a giant palm tree that almost touches the glass roof. About how the leaves die and form protection around the trunk. I find myself looking at the tree and speculate what will happen if it grows any higher because there isn’t much room left. The other guy looks uninterested like the Chinese girl did, and then I realise that she has disappeared with ‘Red Socks’ because their bench is empty.

A lad with blue tints in his hair comes and sits beside me. I look at all the empty benches and wonder why he’s chosen to sit on the same one as me. Once again, I think that someone might be trying to pick me up. He has a bad cough, as bad as the blue streaks in his hair. He notices me looking, says “Hi,” and I think that he will be good looking once he’s got rid of the blue streaks. The mouse runs across the floor again.

The lad makes conversation and sounds like a nutter because he says that he likes to choose a person walking in the street, any person, a random person, and follow them to see what they do and where they go. He’s not a stalker, he says, and I make my excuses and say that I must be going back to work.