On a straight stretch, Ernestine turned to give the child a more considered appraisal.

‘I wouldn’t think we’ll be depriving the world of an Einstein,’ she said.

‘No indeed.’

‘Bad blood, Kit.’

‘Sure what kind of parents? Can you imagine, Ernie? What kind of parents would lose a child in an Asda?’

‘Drunks and drug addicts and prostitutes,’ Ernestine said.

‘With tattoos on their backsides,’ Kit said.

‘It smells, Kit.’

‘Oh, a smell that would knock you, Ernestine.’

‘Look at the Babygro!’

‘It’s busting out of it.’

‘Fattish alright. Being fed on white bread mulched down with milk and cane sugar.’

‘Asda-bought the Babygro.’

‘Oh, classy.’

‘Could it be …’

‘What, Kit?’

‘Could it be an itinerant we have on our hands?’

‘Oh Jesus Christ, a tinker child!’

‘Ernestine, what I’d say to you now …’

‘I know, darling.’

‘Do you?’

‘You’re right, darling.’

‘I am! The likes of this … thing isn’t worth the effort nor the risk.’

The decision was made. The Toyota pulled into a lay-by. The toddler was lifted by Kit from the back seat. It was taken across a ditch and left beneath hawthorn bushes – a kindness to give it shade from the sun that was hot still. The Toyota with relief departed the lay-by, and headed for home, the bungalow, the windbreak pines planted in the soft give of an earth that hid so efficiently.

Near the lay-by as the evening aged the toddler sat silently beneath the hawthorn; it was stunned. It blinked against the midges that came up from the lake to feast on it but it had no strength left to cry. With interest, the toddler was watched by a pair of hooded crows, who stalked about importantly – like fascist birds, like jackboot gestapo – who waited on its final weakening, and for its sore eyes to sleepily close.

THE MAINLAND CAMPAIGN

Camden High Street, Sunday morning, 11 a.m.

HE STOOD WITH Manus by the elevator in the tube station as the crowds rose up in a great surge of bodies and voices.

‘It’s a scrum of people alright,’ Manus said.

‘Wait till you see it coming on for one o’clock,’ he said. ‘Once the hungover fuckers have woken up.’

Sunday morning meant Camden Market and all the tribes were headed for it: the goths and the punks, the rockabillies, the acid-house kids.

‘You’re one twisted fucker, Steven. Did I ever tell you that?’

‘The way it works,’ he said, ‘is there’s a kind of honour thing with the buskers.’

An old hippy slapped his guitar and wailed a Neil Young song by the base of the elevator.

‘They take it in turns,’ he said. ‘When you leave your guitar case down beside the fella singing, it means you’re next in line. You go off and have a cup of tea and a smoke.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘That’s it. Sundays, you get a half-hour each by the moving stair. Is the arrangement.’

‘The fucking crowd,’ Manus said.

‘It’s nothing yet,’ Steven said proudly. ‘One o’clock? You can’t breathe for people coming up that stair.’