“But you’re just a bairn. You’ve no ties, nothing holding you back. Why wouldn’t you?” He stood up. “And send me back some lads, will you? Brexit’s put a bloody big hole in my harvesting teams, I’ll tell you that for nothing.”

And with that he put down his glass, smiled, and went home to his lovely Nina and their perfect darling baby boy, deeply happy in his soul that as far as he was concerned he never need decide to go anywhere else other than home ever again.

Part II

Chapter 17

There are few places lonelier than a crowded station platform five hundred miles away from home, where you know nobody but a lot of people are trying to get past you, or get you out of the way.

Cormac had taken the sleeper train down. He thought he wouldn’t sleep, given he had so much to think about, but the comfortable bed and the rocking motion of the carriage, as well as the nip of whisky he’d bought from the onboard bar, had all combined to send him off into a surprisingly deep sleep, punctuated by dreams that had him swimming or riding a horse—anything involving motion.

Euston station at 7:30 in the morning was absolutely heaving: grimy with dirt, full of smartly dressed people moving—why did they all have to walk so fast?

He looked around them, standing under a huge four-faced clock, feeling ridiculously out of place. He must have stood out a mile to anyone with his freckled complexion, his messy sandy-brown hair, his corduroy trousers. Perhaps he would have to rethink the trousers. His mum had bought them for him, telling him that’s what everyone wore in Edinburgh. Why she thought Edinburgh was the height of fashion sophistication he wasn’t entirely sure. Nobody here was wearing corduroy. She was happy he had gone anyway. It wasn’t easy, bearing the weight of his mother’s disappointment. Another good reason to take some time away.

Anyway, everyone here was wearing expensive suits or skinny jeans or baggy pants and all sorts of weird and wonderful colors you didn’t see much of in Kirrinfief. And Jake hadn’t, it turned out, been lying about the women; some of them did indeed look like models, all made up, with bright blond or pink or blue hair, strange eyebrows (Cormac was not the expert on eyebrows), and incredibly outlandish clothes. The whole thing was bewildering. How did all these people know where they were going? Why didn’t they all bang into each other? Why were they all holding to-go cups with green drinks in them?

Cormac scratched his chin and slowly—clumsily, rather, with his heavy rucksack—went in search of a London Underground map, narrowly missing clouting a tiny girl clip-clopping her way around him, who let out a sigh louder and more pointed than he would have expected from such a small woman.