Arrow and script lettering on the ribs

Terry lived on the fourteenth floor of Harcourt House with a wife who'd left him for a bus driver and a dog that wouldn't come when called. When the council came round with their clipboards and their talk of decanting, Terry told them he'd go when the wind stopped. It never stopped. Up there it hits the windows like it has a grudge against the glass, and the whole block hums with it at night like a kettle that's never going to boil.

His mother used to say the same thing over and over, the thing about this too shall pass, and Terry hated it because she only ever said it when he was miserable. So one Sunday he took a biro and drew an arrow on a scrap of card, pointing towards the door, and wrote her words under it in his neat little hand. He stuck it to the frame so he'd see it every time he went out to get his paper. Every morning for a year it was the first thing he read, and every morning he stood there and said nothing, which I took as progress.

Then the boiler went in February, and the lift went in March, and the rain came in through the stairwell like it had been invited. The council's van turned up in April. Terry didn't argue. He packed a box with his mother's cups and his dog's lead, and when he got to the door he stopped and peeled off the card. He looked at it for a long while, the little arrow pointing forward, and then he pressed it flat in the lid of the box and carried the whole lot down the stairs, one flight at a time.