Fifteen Blue Bricks

A child's bedroom in a terraced house in England on a grey winter afternoon, soft light from the left through a white net curtain, on a patterned wool rug a small half-built wall of glossy bright blue toy bricks, each brick a rectangle with eight smooth round studs in two rows, beside it a small cardboard box nine centimetres tall lying open on its back, the inside plain pale grey card, the outer sides plain bright red from edge to edge, loose blue bricks on the rug, a child's hand in a knitted sleeve reaching down from the top of the frame and pressing a brick onto the wall.