There’s an unnerving silence, as if he might have hung up on her. Then the voice says, “I don’t think it’s a very good idea to hitchhike. Why don’t you take a train? I’ll come meet you at the station. Or do you not have money for train fare?”

“We don’t have any more money. But hitching is fine; I always hitchhike.”

“Do you have a place to stay in London?”

She hesitates. “No, not yet, but I’m sure we’ll …”

“I can’t hear you very well—the connection’s not very good. Would you like to stay with us?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Look. What shall we do about getting you here?” the voice ponders. “Hold on a moment.” There’s a clatter of the telephone receiver and of departing footsteps and voices in English. A moment later, the voice is back.

“I tell you what to do. Find a taxi driver who will drive you to London—if you have any problem, call me up again and let me talk to the driver. You can come straight here, and I’ll pay at this end.”

“That would cost a fortune!”

“Don’t worry, it’s simpler. Have you got our address?”

“No.”

“Have you got something to write with?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know London at all? We live in West London.”

Hawkridge Road is a street of rather grim brick-fronted Edwardian houses, in a neighborhood wedged between a highway overpass and the train tracks.

Number 39 is the house at the corner. It has ugly bars over the windows and a big medallion advertising its security system.

The door is opened by a woman.

“Hel-lo,” the woman says, in a loud, ringing voice. “You must be Celia. I’m Kate, Gillem’s wife.”

Rat blinks. In all her years’ speculations about her father, it has never occurred to her that he might be married. She has taken too literally Vanessa’s description of Gillem as a hermit. She has pictured her and Morgan sleeping on the floor of an artist’s studio, with him on a single bed at the other end. Even his reiteration over the telephone of “we”s and “our”s had not prepared her. She had assumed, with solemn satisfaction, that he meant him and Celia Kidd.