All through the night Melissa tried to sleep in the over­heated dog kennel of a room which opened onto a blank wall – finished for some reason in greasy off-white tiles. All night Melissa heard the sound of police and ambulance sirens, heavy rumbling from beneath the streets like furniture being dragged in another room, the detached shouts of drunks and, from the hotel’s pipes, anguished moaning, followed by clunking and juddering and also there was muffled speaking in tongues – maybe of sex between strangers – and below and around all this, a constant thrumming from deep beneath the crust of London with mysterious electrical and gaseous qualities, as though she could hear the power lines and gasworks and sewers all in constant flux and surge and spurt. Her thin, dirty, mustard curtains flickered as lights of unknown origin played on the walls of the soiled well outside her room, sending her an anxious but obscure message of distress.

By the time morning comes, she believes she is exhausted. I am in no state for what’s to come. I am in no state to meet a source. But the thought of her source revives her. She gets out of bed, showers in the thin but scalding trickle, and dresses in her classic Marks & Spencer suit. The dining room is staffed by a single Eastern European waitress with very dry blonde hair, wearing a shiny black uniform with an apron, so that the pre-glasnost look, if that’s what is intended, is complete. Melissa’s breakfast is included in the out-of-town deal. A laminated card on the table reads: The Full English Breakfast is specially designed to set you up for some serious retail therapy in London’s famous West End. The waitress has wary, trafficked eyes. She brings the scrambled eggs and tinned orange juice of the designer breakfast and inspects Melissa coldly, as if trying to assess what this young and chubby girl is doing all alone in London.

‘Coffee, you like?’

‘Oh, yes please.’

She comes back with a metal jug of coffee and pours it. Artair has spoiled her for coffee; she wants to say that she only drinks Signor Lavazza’s Crema e Aroma. There is no cosy West Country chat, which Melissa would have liked; maybe the waitress sees only competition in some obscure way, feminine competition for economic advancement. After breakfast she looks for the tenth time at her Google maps. She wants to make sure she knows exactly where she is going. Time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted, says her father, who was in the Territorial Army for a time, driving a Bedford truck, which he says was the workhorse of the armed forces. He likes phrases like ‘armed forces’ and ‘naval power’ and ‘deadly force’.