It is a beautiful day for the world to end. People in their winter coats are silhouetted against a postcard skyline. Raindrops loosen from lampposts and fall to wet pavements that shine like gold leaf. Luminous. Everything is luminous.

Fit for a finale, the South Bank has been threaded with fairy lights, peppered with market stalls, and scented with sweet, mulled wine. The Thames reflects the whole scene back to itself, an ouroboros of festivity.

A little farther down the river, under a stained concrete bridge, the seasonal standards of a brass band spill toward the London Eye. The cheerful music warms the waiting queue, which stamps its feet and puffs out cloudy breaths with something approaching rhythm.

This is the London that first drew Carrie, and on evenings like this, it lives up to every promise. The reward for enduring that other London of lockjaw morning tubes, piss-stink corners, and yellow crime signs.

And she’s not just in London this evening, she’s in Paris as she smells chestnuts and cigarettes. Or Vienna, as she trails her fingers along a wooden market stall. The tang of the river borrowed from Amsterdam’s canals. A hundred different accents. An accordion of cities pressed together.

Carrie jogs up the concrete slope away from the Thames and walks past rows of early diners opposite the Southbank Centre. Happy hour cocktails and garlicky suppers. She has left work at the ad agency early, as most people do at the end of the week. It’s technically still afternoon but it feels like Friday night has already swung into place, a gin blossom glow on the faces she passes.

The end of the week. We made it.