There was someone else in the heaps, not the deep dark shadow down underneath, but someone other entirely. He was very smartly dressed. Like he was going somewhere special. It took me a moment to think how strange it was to see someone so well dressed out here in the middle of the rubbish heap. Top hat, tails, bow tie, white shirt, quite the gent. Something strange about his trousers though, they were very tight the bottom half, and I couldn’t make them out at first. Who’s that, I wondered, what the hell’s he doing out here? He’ll sink, I thought, if he doesn’t watch it. He was tall, I could tell that even out there in the heaps, so tall I thought at first that he must be an adult. Some crazy Iremonger full-blood out for a stroll in the heaps, storm coming on. It was only when he got closer that I saw he was a boy, a tall child. I only figured that out by the strange trousers, they weren’t trousers at all, they were shorts, dark shorts like what Clod wore and naked skin beneath the knee. Oh, Clod, I thought then, Clod, who is this fellow here dancing out in the heaps, you’d know, wouldn’t you. You’d say. Oh, tell him to go back in, I thought, oh, tell him, do tell him, he shouldn’t be out there in this. He’ll catch his death. I’ve done something wrong, something very wrong in their books, but even me they thought to cover up, to give this helmet and these leathers, and to give me an anchor, no matter how weak, to give me this line and all. And then I finally realised it. He didn’t have a line. If he didn’t have a line he didn’t have an anchor. There was nothing tying him to land. He wasn’t connected. He’ll die. I think I actually said that, those words, moving around in my leathers, making steam on my helmet glass, ‘He’ll die.’