Older houses. Villa-styled piles subdivided into flats. Victorian houses with pattern-tiled paths and iron railings. Wide avenues with big-canopied trees. Landscaped gardens. The sun flashing on conservatory glass. Peace and calm.

The mask of loveliness, W. says. What does it conceal? The children behind the windows are depressed, he says. The children in their bedrooms are starving themselves to death. They know what Reading is. They know where it is they live.

Builders’ vans. Scaffolding. The bourgeois are extending downwards, into the earth, W. says. They’re putting in swimming pools and home cinemas. But it won't save them. The world will end here as elsewhere. The Reading rich will scream, just as the Reading poor will scream ...