The main room overlooked the back. It was quite big still, the acceptable bit of the open plan. It was very untidy, very “lived in,” and I expect it was dirty but you don’t notice dust and fingermarks when you’re twenty. There were three of those dormers in the room, just as there were at the front, casements with arched tops, and all of them were wide open, gray net curtains blowing and tangling themselves on the window catches. On a once-handsome leather sofa, now scratched and stained with ink or paint, lay a girl of about my own age fast asleep.

“That’s Liv,” Silver said. “She’s Swedish. She ran away from some children.”

“Her children, d’you mean?”

“They were monsters, she says. She was their nanny.”

Was she his girlfriend? I felt my euphoria waver. “Why here?” I said.

“People of our sort of age run away a lot, don’t you find? They’re always running away from something or other and they mostly seem to come here. Word gets around, I suppose. There’s a guy called Jonny, he’s sort of her boyfriend, I mean he is now, he ran away from prison.”

“Prison?”

“An open prison. One of those places where you can walk around the grounds if you want, so naturally he walked around them and walked out. They got him back, it was awhile ago. You look puzzled. You mustn’t worry, you’ll get it sorted after a time. I know it’s confusing to start with.”

So there was going to be “a time.” And this Liv was someone else’s girlfriend, not Silver’s. Her face was childlike in sleep, a child who had been up a chimney, black mascara smudged on her high cheekbones. The kind of fair hair that comes in stripes, yellow, pale blond, straw, and mouse brown, lay spread out on a cushion in a torn red cover. I went to one of the windows and looked out. The sky was blue and clear, my eyes were on a level with the topmost branches of a tree from which a pigeon with pink breast feathers looked back at me. I could see over the rears of the houses in the next street to a white stucco turret beyond and, distantly, the knife-shaped spire of St. Saviour’s church. The air was fresh yet warm and I inhaled it gratefully.

“Let’s have a cup of tea,” said Silver. “She’ll wake up when she hears the clink of spoons, she always does. And the others will come soon.”

“The others?”