Located on the cusp of one of London’s biggest Jewish areas, Brent Cross shopping centre was desolate on Saturday mornings, the only footfall within the shop coming from the hapless and the lost, the impossible rich, and the shockingly profane. Things picked up in December, but this close to Christmas, when everyone had already done their shopping, Brent Cross was a wasteland.
Sometimes, leaning against the silent coffee machine or drawing doodles on spare scraps of till roll, Madeline asked herself how long it would be before Brent Cross went under completely. Surely it could not compete with the immediacy of the internet, surely it was just a place for the perennially tardy and for boomers, now?
For as long as she could remember, there had been talk of the shopping centre being brought
