The Model

Helen Fenwick had not intended to come back to Bridge Street at four in the morning. She had intended to sleep in her flat in Leeds, in the clean white bed with the view of the river that she had paid a great deal of money for, and to drive to Hollin Bridge at nine like a reasonable person. Instead she had lain awake until half past two, and then got up, and dressed, and driven forty minutes through the empty dark, and let herself into an old house that smelled of paint and somebody else’s life.

模型

She did not turn on the heaters. She stood at the window of the front room in her coat with her arms folded and looked across the road. The bakery’s window was the only lit thing in the street, a warm yellow rectangle in the stone, and in it, every so often, a figure crossed: a tall man with a grey beard, a small young woman with short black hair, carrying trays, bending, laughing at something. She could not hear them. She did not need to.

Helen Fenwick本无意在凌晨四点回到Bridge Street。她本打算留在Leeds的公寓里睡觉，躺在那张花了大价钱才买下的、能俯瞰河景的干净白床上，像个正常人一样等到九点再开车去Hollin Bridge。然而，她一直毫无睡意地躺到两点半，随后起床、穿衣，在空旷无人的黑夜中驱车四十分钟，用钥匙打开了一栋弥漫着油漆味和别人生活痕迹的老屋。

Behind her, on the long table, the model of the new Bridge Street glowed faintly white in the light from the street. Twenty-two flats. A roof garden. The café on the ground floor with its tiny white chairs, where the oven now stood. She had paid an architect in Leeds eleven thousand pounds for that model, and she had been proud of it, and she still believed in every square metre of it. That was the problem. Belief, in her experience, was a great deal less comfortable than doubt.

她没有开暖气。她穿着大衣，双臂抱胸站在前屋的窗前，望向马路对面。面包店的窗户是这条街上唯一有光的地方，在石墙间透出一块暖黄色的长方形；在那扇窗后，每隔一会儿便有一道身影走过：一个留着灰白胡子的高个子男人，一个留着黑色短发的小个子年轻女人，端着托盘，弯下身，又为什么事情笑了起来。她听不见他们的声音，也不需要听到。