Part Four A few evenings later George was standing at the window of his own apartment and looked out across the river towards the Complex. From there he could only see the western part and he was thinking about Christmas and the way Charles Dickens had described it. The snow, the open fires, the crowded streets, the decorations, the grubby, happy faces. The story of the Christmas Spirit. He thought about the dirt, the grime, the poverty and cramped living conditions inflicted by generations of democracy that the Corporation had sensibly made a thing of the past.
‘What an imagination Dickens must have had,’ thought George, ‘to have made all of that up in his own mind. No wonder he was such a popular writer. That’s what the best writers do,’ he remembered being taught, ‘make up places that
