12.43 pm

There is a rhythm, a unity to handing unwanted objects to strangers, the leaflet is like a connection and a barrier between you. It is a constant stream, but not too many, they are mostly businesslike, some pushing buggies or carrying shopping (mainly women), one person in a wheelchair navigates the broken pavement edge. ‘Do you care about climate change?’ Alice says over and over. Pen basically just holds a leaflet out any time someone walks near her. It’s hard to care, say the people’s faces, they are busy, they are going somewhere, they have their own problems, they think they can choose for air and water and earth not to be their issue. But they seem to like Alice, they smile as they look past her, as they swerve to avoid, shaking heads but nicely (Pen decides). A man in a suit pauses, rifles in his pocket, tries to hand them change.

‘We’re not collecting,’ Alice says.

‘We’re interested in real change,’ Pen hears herself say. The man walks on.

‘Nice one,’ Alice says, and Pen might explode.

‘Do you care about real change?’ Alice asks of the next few people. Pen thinks she could do this for ever, with Alice. Alice says perhaps they should branch out, maybe if they stood nearer the college they’d get, like, more young people? Pen nods. Alice once said that she likes how Pen’s quietness makes her easy to be with. Pen hopes she meant it. Today-the-words-will-flow is proving harder than she’d thought.

They have only got as far as the Hansel and Gretel bakery, which looks like a really nice bakery, but it is still a slightly weird thing to call it because of how the parents were trying to lose their kids and the way the gingerbread and all the treats nearly killed them. Claire is not into stories with witches. ‘For goodness’ sake,’ Sandy says, ‘you don’t have to feel sorry for everyone.’ But Pen understands what her mother means, because she thinks maybe the witch was just not a people person and it doesn’t seem fair to turn being an introvert into being a child-killer. ‘It’s not literal,’ Sandy says, but Pen thinks, what if it is?

Pen says, ‘Maybe they have students handing stuff out at the college already?’ and Alice’s face looks like it’s sad, but then Pen says, ‘At the corner we can see more of what’s going on, and there’s the cross-traffic.’ So they drift back again to the edge of the square. Pen actually just likes how the pavement is bigger and there’s fewer cars and there’s more sky and somehow more air here. ‘Trinity Ward’, the wall plaque says. She feels slightly bad for tricking Alice.

‘Do you care about real change?’ asks Alice.

A woman in a blue coat takes a leaflet and actually stops to read, just on the edge of the kerb. She doesn’t crumple it or let it fall, she reads. She turns back to them. ‘Does this stress you out?’ she asks. Alice says to the woman that they’re taking back control, that’s what this action is about, it’s much more stressful not doing anything. She asks the woman if she wants to join them, but she says she has a meeting, she has a thing. She gestures ahead, her face white. She seems, to Pen, as if she is very sad and Pen imagines a large grey backpack. ‘Thanks, though.’ Halfway across the road, the woman suddenly turns and calls back. ‘Can I take your photo?’