She reached The Baker’s Arms, a pub of crocodile green from the interior of which fruit machines flickered. A narrower road, tree-lined, led out into a cobbled square. It seemed likely. She went down it. At the street’s end the square spread out, rimmed by even quainter, cuter shops bursting with curiosities and furry toys.

The church-cathedral faced modernity across the cobbles, a brown-and-molasses structure pocked by carving and warted by gargoyles who leaned precariously towards the earth from their heights.

Across the square stood a hotel. It was too smart and would cost too much, but it made her think along the proper lines. She must find shelter, until the day of the train.

That was settled then, her plan augmented but not broken.

At four o’clock Rachaela had located a small hotel which offered bed and breakfast. It lay in a warren of streets behind the church, a whitewashed Georgian building, joined to others, another symbol of her goal: London. She was, by the time she found it, at the end of her tether. Empty of food, tired beyond belief, she sank on the lean little bed and lay with her eyes shut.

She would have to go out again for anything to eat. They had refused her a sandwich; only breakfasts were presented in the rooms between seven-thirty and nine.

Already the dark was coming, the glittery day closing itself in leaden cloud.

From her window, Rachaela could see a yard, drainage pipes, a window opposite veiled in white curtain, which obviously gave the same view as her own—yard, pipes, window.

That was immaterial. She had found out the day from the hotel register. It was Tuesday. Only two days then of this. Then the train to Fleasham and so to Sickly or Poorly or whatever, and the capital. Where she must lose herself for ever to the Scarabae, with their eccentric intimate burnings of corpses on the shore. Lose herself to the man who claimed to be her father, whose own black fire had seared her, set her running.

She tried to breathe more easily, her chest was so tight it was sore.

No longer excited.

But there was nothing to fear.

How could they find her? She had muddled even herself, twisting and turning about the ghastly town, asking in shops, sitting down once in a café but unable to drink the tea or eat the bun.

She must calm herself. She had succeeded.

Nothing to fear.

She went out at eight o’clock, entered the little café down the street, ordered an omelette and chips and was able, with the glass of wine, to eat some of it.

Rachaela did not want to return to the featureless cramped room but she had no choice. Neither did she want to wander again the peopled town.