Greg was having one of those crazy days. One of those days when he wished he had a clock that ticked. Because at least listening to it would be something to do. Yes, he could picture himself sitting and counting the seconds go by, drumming his fingers in time to the slow steady pulses of the clock. He was having one of those days when he found himself messing up his room, just so he could clean it again. One of those days when he was reading the back of shampoo bottles, nutrional information on his food packets, the fine print on old reciepts from the gabage. One of those days where he tried to arm wrestle himself. One of those days when he watched repeats of forensic shows, then reconstructed his own crme scenes and solved them. One of those days where he imagined how great it would be if something happened, something different, something to reak the steady routine that everybody seemed so desperate to stick to. One of those days where he looked out the old travel magazines he kept under his matress andwould flick to a random page. Whatever page it opened on, he would close his eyes and pretend to be there, what places he would visit, where he would stay, all the things he would discover. If he didn't know enough about the place he'd look it up in the atlas. This was probably also the reason that Greg was an A student in geography. Despite never having been more than an hour awya from his small town. But now he was having one of those days when he wanted to see it all, travel the world. One of those days where he dreamed about just leaving, just getting up and going. Yes, Greg was having one of those days. He'd been having them all the more frequently recently.

The only difference was that this day, he did.

He took a rucksack . He went down to where his mother was stirring a pot of something and told her that he was leaving. Just that. "Mamma, jeg drar." She didn't even turn around. If she had, she would have seen that the rucksack on his shoulders, the rucksack he had taken out of his too preoccupied with her cooking to realise what he had said, or else she truly didn't care about where he was going. And then he left. She would read all about it when she saw the note he had left for her on his bed. The note she would find when she went up to fetch him for dinner. Just a note telling her that he was leaving, he wasn't sure where too yet, but he was leaving. A note saying that he loved her and knew she loved him too and that he would write as soon as he could. A note that said not to worry. And goodbye.

An hour later, his mother would find that note on his bed. She would read it five times, then sit down on his bed. She would think about her Gregory, and her eyes would be drawn to the wall where she used to measure him. She would look at the pencilled lines with his age and height written next to them. He remembered what it was like to look out the window when he was six years old, 3ft 111⁄4in. When he was ten, 4ft 71⁄8in. When he was twelve, the numbers stopped. He decided he was too old to be measured. He had outgrown the pencilled lines and numbers on his wall. And now, he had outgrown her. She would sigh, and a single tear would roll down her cheek. But she wouldn't go after him because she knew that she had held him back long enough. And that now she had to let him go. She would get up, taking the note with her. And as she did, she would turn off the music he had left playing. On repeat, in his tape player for hours. Del Amitri's "Nothing Ever Happens."

Greg was lucky. Because although he lived in a small town where nothing ever happened, although he had braces and a wire on his teeth, although he wasn't allowed to play sports at school and everyone luaghed at him. He was lucky because he had money. Over five million dollars in inheritance, left to him by some great great ancestor who's name he could never remember. It was why his family lived in the biggest house on the street. Why nobody by the name of Sanderson had to work. Why he stopped off in the bank before leaving. He took out five hundred pounds, and got a cheque book and a credit card from the bank. Then he ran to the airport to catch a flight.

Where to, he didn't know yet.