The voice is cold, the voice is clear. The voice says it is not the voice of an angel, but if there was an angel of icicles and winter mornings it would sound like the voice does. The voice does not speak much. It mostly sings - not words, but long, trailing sounds, all vowels and vibrato. It doesn't sing all the time, not anything like. Days can pass without it, but not months. Or rarely. There's no real pattern, as far as I can discern.
I first heard the voice on a spring morning. I was late for work and I was bounding up the escalator at Holborn and just as I got to the top and saw that it was raining hard outside the voice greeted me for the first time with a swish of high, bright notes. I smiled at the sound and my momentary irritation at the rain slipped away. I remember that I wasn't surprised at the voice, that it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. It's been with me ever since then, on and off.
There are times when I think that the voice is mocking me and my moods. Sometimes when I'm down it strikes up a jaunty march. Sometimes when I'm happy it strains out low, quiet echoes like dignified sobs. Other times it matches me better and I feel then that our relationship works. I feel some days that the voice isn't used to being sociable, that it's shy and tentative and fragile. On other days it seems more confident, delighting in its shivery loveliness. Sometimes when I talk with friends I mock the voice, and it laughs along with me. Perhaps the voice recognises that sometimes you have to be kind to be cruel.
I once asked the voice if it thought that what we had together was love. There was a long pause, then it sang a sound that began like a sonorous horn call then changed to a winter breeze then to dirty trains rushing through murky tunnels. I wasn't sure that this sound really answered my question, but I didn't press.