“I have no idea. It just kinda slipped out, I was so desperate for something to say.”

“You could have said you were scared of sharks.”

“I’m sorry, Mo.”

Rat gets up on her knees, and rubs Morgan’s back. Pats him on the bottom. “Time for sleep, okay? Tomorrow we can relax, concentrate on getting you well again. No more border crossings. No more sleeping in the rain. No more pissing in the bushes, burying our shit in a hole. No more eating out of the garbage. We’re safe.”

They are both silent.

“You know what?” Morgan says, finally.

“What?”

“I kinda liked our life on the road. I’m gonna miss it.”

“Me too.” She gives his shoulder a last squeeze, before climbing back into her own bed. “Well, you know, we can always try asking Kate, Mind if we go out in the garden? No, we don’t want to look at the lovely flowers, we want to take a shit. And by the way, no bacon and eggs, or whatever you English people eat for breakfast, please can we just pick around in your garbage instead, because you see that’s what we’re used to.”

Morgan explodes into little squeals of laughter.

“I’ll be, like, ‘Watch it, Artemio, better hold on tight to that stuffed pig, else Morgan here’s likely to wolf it down, too.’”

Morgan starts rooting around, squealing like a little piglet himself, pretending to be gobbling up Artemio’s toys, until he laughs so hard he falls off his bed and onto Rat’s mattress on the floor.

Rat grabs him tight and hugs him. “Got you, piggy!” she says.

Chapter 2

That first day, they don’t get up till two in the afternoon.

Every time Rat awakens, it’s so dark outside she thinks it’s not yet dawn. Until finally she realizes it’s not going to get any lighter.

It’s raining. The floor is icy, and her bare legs, emerging from beneath the child-size coverlet, are freezing. Last night she’d tried to block the draft that was coming through the window with a couple of T-shirts, and now they’re soaking. She hasn’t packed the right clothes for England. She at least has Florian’s corduroy jacket, but Morgan has nothing warmer than a light windbreaker. No wonder he’s sick.

She climbs into Morgan’s bed to get warm, and for a moment it’s as if they’re back at Mas Cargol, and soon Jean-Luc’s going to be driving her to school. Except outside you hear the oily rumble of buses, cars honking, people talking on the street. Amid her homesickness, a curiosity to get a gawk at this great city of London, which during last night’s taxi ride seemed not one unified metropolis, but a stream of small towns, each with its own post office, Laundromat, hairdresser.