Now, every afternoon, Morgan asked if he mightn’t go over to the Samuel Bacon Housing Trust to play football. And Rat, when she got bored hanging around the grimy courtyard, nodding and smiling at the West Indian grannies on their way to and from the shops, soon agreed that he might as well make his way there and back on his own. He’d limp home at teatime, dirty, bruised, and glowing. There were a couple of African kids he played with who spoke French; they called him Zidane. The only hitch was that because of the insanely early hour at which he and Artie were required to have their tea, he usually had to leave in the middle of a match.

Couldn’t Rat intercede with Kate, point out that it was senseless for him to be home by six, when there were a good two and a half hours of daylight left? He’d much rather cook his own supper, and clean up after himself, too. It wasn’t so bad when Kate made tea, but Mirjana cooked like a pig.

Rat raised the subject as diplomatically as she could, only to be forestalled by Kate. She was so relieved Rat had brought it up; she’d been meaning to have a word. She was a bit concerned about Morgan’s being in Queens Park by himself, she said. (Rat had been deliberately vague about where exactly it was that Morgan played with his mates.) There were a gang of older boys from the neighboring council estate who hung out in the park, she said. Rat needed to be very careful, because Kate’s nephew Tarquin, who lived down the road, had been mugged and had his cell phone stolen by those boys more times than you could count.

Rat didn’t know what “council estate” meant; she thought it must mean “prison” or at least “reform school,” and when she discovered that what it actually meant was subsidized housing—in fact, the Samuel Bacon Trust itself—she felt as if Kate and Gillem’s London were an odd place, and much narrower than any world she herself was accustomed to inhabiting.

“Oh, Morgan’ll be fine,” she said, reassuringly. “At home, all our friends live on council estates.”

Kate made as if to answer sharply, but then she relaxed into laughter. “I suppose I look a total fool giving safety lessons to a couple of children who managed to hitchhike from the South of France to Sussex unscathed. But I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you on my watch.”

Several days later, however, she presented Rat with a pass to the London Underground, a program for free summer events, and an old cell phone of hers. “That way you’re a bit freer, and we won’t have to worry you’re dead in a ditch.” She had a way of making her most generous gestures sound scolding.