So people dressing colorfully, wearing yellow spectacles or bright turquoise suits or pointy red shoes, they were all adding to the brick urban landscape, giving you something beautiful and interesting to look at, because, in Cormac’s mind, they were so unlucky as to be trapped somewhere they couldn’t look at the sea, and the trees, and the sky.

They walked along the embankment of the vast sludge-covered river. It being the weekend, the sidewalks were absolutely thronged with people: families; people on bicycles and scooters, mostly ridiculous grown men with funny beards; brightly colored groups of young Italians with large rucksacks; self-satisfied people stepping out of the curious Globe Theatre. There were just so many people. How, thought Cormac, did you ever get used to it? He understood completely now why you couldn’t say hello to passersby, couldn’t even make eye contact. It would be impossible, exhausting. Except, as he got carried along by the throng, he found himself thinking, You know, if anyone was looking at me, they wouldn’t necessarily think that I came from a tiny village, that I’d never spent time in the city before. They would see me walk and not think anything of it, think I’d lived like this all my life. And he found, to his surprise, that he rather liked that sensation.

“We’re going to look at some art,” announced Kim-Ange.

“I don’t know anything about art,” said Cormac.

“You doodle all day long!”

“That’s different. And modern art is weird. It looks like a kid did it.”

“What an original and valuable insight,” said Kim-Ange. “You’re in the middle of one of the best centers for art in the world and all you want to do is sit in steak house windows in Leicester Square.”

Cormac wished he’d never told her that. “Shut up.”

“No, you shut up! You might learn something!”

Cormac trailed after her like a reluctant child as they entered a huge factory building with high brown chimneys right on the riverbank. There was a low, wide set of glass doors along the back end, and small children with scooters and tricycles were gleefully careering about the open space.

Inside, away from the sunlight, it was gloomy and cool. The sloping concrete floor opened onto a vast underground chamber filled with odd shapes and sizes. Cormac folded his arms and announced that he couldn’t tell a piece of sculpture from the sign for the toilets, but Kim-Ange oohed and aahed. Cormac nodded patiently and wondered whether there was a fast-food restaurant nearby, because in Kirrinfief the closest McDonald’s was fifty miles away, and he found it something of a treat; it reminded him of birthdays when he was a child, when the entire family would make a special trip, and Jake had been bugging him to find out what KFC tasted like.