Cormac groaned and went over and washed his face in the small sink. “Are you sure you don’t just want me with you so you can lean on me when your feet get sore in your very stupid shoes?” he said.

They were quite stupid shoes, with a dangerous-looking stiletto heel.

“I do,” said Kim-Ange. “And bare your teeth if anyone starts shouting.”

“Who’s going to shout at you?” said Cormac, drying his stubble. “And even if they do, you won’t hear them up there, you’re about nine feet tall in those.”

“Catwalk,” said Kim-Ange sagely. “Come on, we’ll go up to Tate Modern. They’re all arty up there. I shall be appreciated.”

She smiled at him.

“Well done for this morning. Risky, but you pulled it off.”

Cormac didn’t feel much better, though.

Although once they got outside, into what Cormac considered to be a terrifying heat wave and everyone else thought was a perfectly normal day, he felt that something had changed. At first when he’d gone into clothes shops or walked through Soho, marveling at the looks, the fashion, the different types of people—male, female, and everything in between—he’d found it embarrassing. Why would anyone dress like that? Why would people want to stand out and have everyone stare at them, giggling and pointing?

Now, as he started to get more used to the ins and outs of the inner city, he’d realized something that would have completely surprised him: he liked it.

He liked the individuality of people’s dressing. He liked the effort that went into having silver hair, or wearing a wig or something incredibly uncomfortable, just so that everyone else didn’t have to look at the same boring jeans and fleeces all day.

He also had a theory: In Scotland, the colors and the world around you changed daily, hourly even. The pink of the blossom bursting, the gold of the daffodils, the deep greens of the grass after the rain, and the soft lavender of the heather on the hillsides. Bright yellow fields of rapeseed; fresh white lambs dotting the place like clouds; sunsets that stretched uninterrupted for miles.

Here it was gray pavement, gray buildings, gray pavement, brown buildings, everywhere you went. Always the same, never changing. Harsh electric lights burning yellow, over and over again. You could barely see the sky from the street, couldn’t see anything bursting into life and color, changing day by day. Nothing changed. Everything was at the same temperature, everything was built upon, and anything that wasn’t had a crane sitting on top of it.