“Too fucking bad—she’s here!” Kate’s laugh is loud and bitter.

“Why are you being so aggressive? What do you want me to do about it?”

His tone is so defeated that she softens.

“Well, invite her over, of course. We must invite her to the house. What’s she doing, is she studying here?”

“I don’t think she’s arrived in London yet. She said she was coming soon.”

“Does she have somewhere to stay? What’s her name?”

He’s reluctant to answer. “Celia,” he says, finally. “Celia Bonnet.”

“Celia!” Kate explodes again into laughter. “That does take some nerve. What a shame your mother’s non compos mentis. If the girl’s pretty, she’d have loved her. And French, too! Well, I suppose we’d better tell Artemio he has a sister.”

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

“It’s the truth.”

He grimaces.

“It’s the truth,” Kate insists. “He has a half sister. People need to know the truth in a family—I don’t want to be part of a cover-up that he’ll find out in some way that will hurt worse, and make him feel as if he never knew you, either.”

Gillem pauses, as if waiting for her to relent, then rises to his feet.

“Are you going out?” Kate asks. Her tone is frosty.

“I was going to visit my mother,” he says. “Would you rather I went tomorrow, instead? It’s just that I’ve been putting it off all week …”

“No, of course you should go.” She’s going to be like this—chilly, polite—until he can’t take it any longer and they both break down and admit that they love each other so much it hurts. “You don’t suppose you could pick up Artemio from his piano lesson on your way home?”

“What time does he finish?”

“Half past six.”

Gillem glances at the kitchen clock. It will make it an even thinner wafer of time with his mother than he might have liked, but he daren’t say no. “What number is it, again?”

“Thirty-seven Cleveland Square.”

Thirty-seven, thinks Gillem to himself as he closes the front door. Thirty-seven is the age van Gogh was when he shot himself. Sometimes numbers comfort Gillem with their stolid incontrovertibility. But these days there is no comfort in this number, or in anything else …

When they get back from the market, Rat can tell at once that someone has visited their camp. Her and Morgan’s sleeping area smells of dope, and there’s an imprint of somebody’s body on Morgan’s sleeping bag. A pot-smoking Goldilocks.

She goes through to the Great Hall. The Paulines are unloading their booty: salads, fruit, bread. They’ve bought some cheeses and a long string of Catalan sausages to grill for dinner tonight. Some friends from another squat are arriving tonight on their way to an antinuclear demonstration in Marseille.