war zone (hypothetical)

At approximately a quarter past one of a Friday morning, fifteen minutes or so after Ricardo had put his book down, whilst he was thinking of ways of improving his book, not far, perhaps, from sleep, Ricardo was disturbed in those thoughts by a gunshot.

For a while he lay in bed. Then, cautiously, he got dressed, tiptoed out of the bed, and peeked through the window. Not a soul stirred in the back garden. Moving to the sitting room, he cautiously (oncemore) created a chink in the Venetian blind and looked out. A red car was parked facing the wrong way in the one way street. After three minutes, a man got into the car and drove away.

Ricardo went back to bed. Every noise counted triple. Distant sirens were not unwelcome. How could he be sure it was a gunshot? He could not. He'd heard gunshots: in movies; as a child when he'd had shooting practice; in a play. The noise had possessed a volume and a violence which had made him think it was a gunshot, but it could have been something else.

Then again, in the barrio of South London he inhabited, a gunshot was not altogether unlikely. He thought about what it would mean were the sound to become a common sound, as it is in certain cities in the world. It would certainly make it harder to sleep, something he was not a master of at the best of times.