The eviction notice came in the middle of a long winter, on one of those afternoons when M just couldn’t warm up, no matter how many sweaters and blankets she piled on her shoulders. When they’d first moved in, Rhonda, the upstairs neighbour and sole avatar of their faceless landlord, had turned the basement’s darkness into a selling point. “Cool all summer,” she’d said, her thin hand with its chorus of twinkling rings sliding along an imaginary ski slope. {read}