What Mrs. Obi Knew

The old woman\'s name was Mrs. Obi and she had lived in this city for sixty years. She had come from Nigeria when she was twenty one with a suitcase and the address of a cousin and had never left. She said this as they walked, not in a sad way but in the way of someone stating a simple fact they were completely happy with.

She walked slowly but she walked with purpose, which Zara noticed straight away. She did not look at her phone. She did not look at the ground. She looked at everything around her as though the street were a book she was reading and she had reached the good part.

"Where are we going?" Zara asked.

"Nowhere in particular," Mrs. Obi said. "That is the point. If you go somewhere in particular you only see that one thing. If you go nowhere in particular you see everything."

Zara was not entirely sure that made sense. But she kept walking.

The first thing Mrs. Obi showed her was a door.

It was on a side street off the main road, an ordinary-looking street with terraced houses and a row of recycling bins. The door was at the end of the street, set into a brick wall, painted dark red, with a brass handle shaped like a fish.

"Why a fish?" Zara asked.

"This whole area used to be a fish market," Mrs. Obi said. "Two hundred years ago the river came right up to this street. The door was the entrance to the market keeper's office. The fish handle is the only thing left."

Zara looked at the door differently after that. It was still just a door in a brick wall but now it was also a door that had been there for two hundred years, standing on what used to be a riverbank, with the ghost of a fish market all around it.

The second thing Mrs. Obi showed her was a gap between two buildings on a busy shopping street. Zara had walked past gaps like this a hundred times and never looked into them. This one had a narrow alley running through it and at the end of the alley was a courtyard, completely hidden from the street, with a small fountain in the middle and four wooden benches around it and flowers growing in pots against every wall.

Three people were sitting on the benches eating their lunch. They all looked up when Zara appeared and then went back to their lunches. As if this hidden courtyard with its fountain and its flowers was simply a normal place to be.

"How did you find this?" Zara asked.

"I walked down the gap," Mrs. Obi said. "A long time ago, out of curiosity." She sat down on one of the benches and stretched her bad knee out in front of her with a small sigh of relief. "The thing about this city," she said, "is that it has been here a very long time and a lot of people have built things and then other people have built things on top of those things and the result is that there are hidden things everywhere. Courtyards behind shops. Staircases going nowhere. Rooms above pubs that nobody goes to anymore. Half the city is invisible if you do not know to look."

Zara sat down on the bench next to her and looked at the fountain. It was small and old and the water coming out of it made a soft steady sound.

"How do you know where to look?" Zara asked.

Mrs. Obi thought about this. "You look for gaps," she said. "Gaps between buildings. Gaps in walls. Gaps in fences. If there is a gap and you can fit through it, something is usually on the other side. Also doors. Doors that look like they go somewhere but you do not know where. Old staircases. Little paths that nobody else is taking. Anywhere that looks like it was important once but people have stopped paying attention to."

She stood up, knee creaking. "Come on. I want to show you one more thing today."