It is hard to say when exactly it starts. Thomas is tired, busy with his fatigue and his wound, his thoughts about Charlie. He is lying in the corner of the train wagon, the squawk of chickens by his ear. Two steps from him the door to the wagon remains wide open. A savage wind whips at them whenever they gather speed, then relents when the train labours up a hill. There are other men in the wagon, other vagrants, a group of two and a third, a solitary man. Livia is sitting far from them, her knees tucked into her chest. It is only later that Thomas realises that she is trying to hide her breasts.

The men sniff her out all the same. It begins without rancour, witless banter about what a pretty boy she is, how creamy her skin.

“Short for ’is age,” one man ventures, shouting against the wind. “A little scrawny. But nice ’ealthy thighs.” When she gets up to shift closer to Thomas, his mate calls after her: “Don’t you worry, pet, we’re just having a bit of fun.” The little Smoke that wafts over from them is playful and oddly inclusive, as though inviting them to join their game.

It is the solitary man who changes the equation. He climbed on later, hours into their journey, running alongside the train at the steepest side of a hill. This man is not interested in Livia. It’s lunch he wants. The chickens are packed into two massive crates, sturdy enough to discourage thievery but perforated at the side to let in air. All one sees of them is a mass of feathers; the occasional blood-red beak sticking out of a perforation; a dozen unblinking eyes. They are packed in willy-nilly, literally stacked on top of each other, are restless, squawking, fighting for floor space and air. The man has hooked two fingers through one of the holes. His face is weather-beaten, the creases caked with Soot. Light, deep-set eyes. It is as though their colour has run.

He catches something, pulls back his arms, holds a chicken foot hooked between his fingers. The man continues tugging until pale pink cartilage broadens to a wedge of fine white feather. Then he gets stuck: the hole just isn’t big enough.

At first Thomas thinks the man means to cut off the leg. But it appears he has no knife. Rather he just continues pulling, his dark face growing darker with the effort. A riot of chicken squawks plays chorus to his effort.

When the blood starts flowing, the man starts smoking, and when his Smoke reaches the other two men, all that is dark in them rises up like a dog called to its master. Again they turn to Livia, and again they begin teasing her, but there is a different quality now to their taunts, something dangerous and needy, and the language soon grows coarse.