CATE WAITS AT the bus stop but no bus comes, and so she walks down the hill into town, the cathedral ahead of her. She has five hours to fill—five hours in which she can do anything, within reason. She could take the train to Charing Cross, go to the National Portrait Gallery. Look at the Sickerts. The Vanessa Bells. Walk up St. Martin’s Lane, through Covent Garden, go to the Oxfam bookshop at the bottom of Gower Street, buy a cheap paperback and sit in one of the squares with it, begin to feel the old contours of herself.

She knows what she should do—go home, wash tea towels and onesies and chef’s uniforms. Fold clothes. Unpack boxes. Finish moving into her house. But she does none of these things—instead she walks, her feet finding the old Pilgrims’ Way, in through the city walls, down Northgate, Palace Street.

At the cathedral entrance the inevitable line of foreign students and international Christians wait to go inside. Cate ducks into Pret, where she buys a coffee and a pastry and sits in the window looking out at the half-timbered heart of the city. There are stalls selling touristy things, baseball caps with LONDON emblazoned on them. Sweet shops selling gobstoppers and rhubarb and custards, with 1950s lettering over their fronts. Red-jacketed young men cruise the crowd, selling punting trips, touting for business. All the ersatz thrills of Merrie twenty-first-century England.

Her eyes are caught by a small stall amid the throng, a banner along the front reading: PROTEST TUITION FEE HIKES. VOTE DECEMBER 10TH.

A young woman stands in front of it, handing out leaflets, her hair long and dyed pink. Cate watches the way she talks to passers-by. Something about her reminds her of Lucy. Her small frame wrapped in a large sweater. The animation on her face.

Despite checking her emails almost hourly, Cate has heard nothing back from Hesther yet.

When she has finished her coffee, Cate goes outside, approaching the stall shyly.

“May I have one?” she says to the young woman with the pink hair, pointing to the leaflets.

“Of course,” smiles the young woman, taking one and pressing it into Cate’s hand. “Do you want to sign the petition too?”