One weekend, when Kate was busy, Gillem took the three children to the Tower of London, which Morgan found so scary they’d had to leave midway and hop in a taxi straight to the ice-cream parlor at Fortnum & Mason, where he was fortified with a Knickerbocker Glory. Rat had pretended to Artemio that it was she who was feeling fainthearted, so he wouldn’t tease Morgan for being a sissy.

That night, after Artemio was put to bed, Gillem had apologized to Rat and Morgan for his thoughtlessness. He himself had always regarded the Tower as being an absolutely barbaric hole, he confessed.

“I can’t imagine what I was thinking of, dragging you there. It just shows you how debased our culture is, that a place that was basically a Tudor gulag should be touted as a Sunday outing for children. How are you feeling, Morgan? A bit better?”

Morgan said he was fine, and since something more was evidently expected of him, admitted that he thought the Parlour at Fortnum & Mason’s was supercool.

“Good boy,” said Gillem warmly, squeezing his shoulder. “We’ll go back next weekend, shall we?”

Rat didn’t understand all the business about Tudor gulags, but she did notice that from then on Gillem treated Morgan with a fellow feeling he’d evidently found it difficult to evince when all he knew about the boy was that he was mad for football.

But apart from this initial tremor, Morgan seemed in fact to be adjusting to London better than Rat. He almost never spoke of Vanessa or of Mas Cargol anymore. It was as if what Thierry did to him had contaminated everything to do with his old life and he was quite happy to start again afresh.

Gillem and Kate’s house was not far from a beautiful park, and most afternoons, if it wasn’t absolutely pouring, Rat made a habit of taking Morgan there. Morgan grumbled about being torn away from the computer, but he was always glad once they got there.

Their shortcut to Queens Park lay across a housing complex. Often there was a bunch of older kids playing football in a concrete court, and Morgan would stop to watch. Morgan would watch the match, and Rat would watch Morgan watching, relishing the way his entire body seemed to be anticipating and reenacting each play. Morgan seemed to have this innate confidence that every ball game in the world was rightfully his, and he waited patiently for the chance to take his place in this one.

One day, the ball came Morgan’s way, he kicked it back, and almost imperceptibly joined in.