Mid-fifties London, the world outside is spinning from ration books to free love, rock and roll. The condemned prisoner, not long out of school, is listening to a radio show and winning another game of cards. He never loses, indulged as some sick child who’ll never mend, no lost games or angry words offend his last unraveling days. He chooses tomorrow’s meal. The chaplain comes to call and softly talk his sins away. He walks one final time across the withered stalks of winter grass, beneath the high stone wall, hearing the city going by outside. He sleeps one last time, or tries to sleep, and must have drifted off somehow because a burst of voices wake him. The hurried breakfast creeps with dreadful slowness. Calming words are spoken by the guards. A door he never knew about slips open. The hangman and his two assistants come in on silent feet. He’s taken by the elbows, half lifted off the ground, and glided backwards through the waiting door, a hood pushed on his head, and up the four steps to the wooden platform. He hears the sound of birds begin to wake, feels something lop soft round his neck, then hears a muffled prayer go speeding past his face, then the rush of air as breath leaves him behind, the final drop.