Sunday on the beautiful doomed Aylesbury Estate

The rain pools on the roof before dripping twelve storeys down the stairwell; slowly like Sunday’s sorrow on the heart. From this height I have seen the world move through years: snow, tangerine sunsets, carnivals and storms. Today, a rainbow has been strung high above the contradiction of style and sorrow; from Burgess Park to the concrete bulk of the Chiltern tenement. Each rainbow is unique, formed from light hitting your eye at a very precise angle. Someone standing next to you will see light coming from a slightly different angle and will therefore see a different rainbow. And so this moment belongs to me.

I suspect that all of us have a covenant with some god or other and yet mine is indefinable. I was never promised that I would be spared pain or that I would always have a place to go. Perhaps the promise is love but I am sure that love means something different here, in a world where the paving stones are cracked like disintegrating ice sheets over an immeasurable sea.

Sometimes I go to meetings, curl my scholar’s hands around a polystyrene cup of instant coffee. And sometimes, suddenly, I will be filled with a feeling of freedom and the desperate desire to stay. I want to remain amidst the grey towers where gunshots and cries echo endlessly, where the wind howls on the deserted balconies and above all, here in this place where I don’t have to swallow pills or cheap cider any more. That world now seems like a dream, a drama played out by my vacant body whilst I looked on helpless. I try to imagine what would happen if I returned to that permanent twilight. I can see it in other people who attempt the impossible journey. It's like crossing to the other side – from the other side of a rainbow, there is no rainbow.