Let's see what Jeremy says about his neighbor Michelle:

"At fifteen her hair was one day red, the next blonde, then jetblack, then reased into Afro kinks and after that rat-rails, then plaited, and then cropped so that it glistened close to the skull. Her lips were scarlet, then purple, then black. Her face was ghost-white and then peach-coloured, then bronze as if it were cast in metal. Pursued by dreams of flight, she left home at sixteen to be with her boyfriend, who was twenty-six. At eighteen she returned to her mother, with two children. She sat in the bedroom which she had fled three years earlier; the faded photos of yesterday's pop stars still stared down from the walls. She said she felt a hundred years old. She'd tried all that life could ofter. Nothing else was left."

Seabrook's acquaintance performs imaginary flights from the home she resents for being stultifyingly real. To Seabrook's neighbour, it brings into relief the awesome and abhorrent power of a home turned into prison - it decomposes time. The experience feel rather like postmodern version of slavery.