Morning turns to afternoon and Charlie does not come. Dawn, noon, dusk: these are the meeting times they have agreed. They shall have to leave soon, to look for food and shelter for the night. There is a water pump on the market square and though the water is grey and tastes of tin they have gone down to it repeatedly, to slacken their thirst and fill up their stomachs with something other than air. To obtain food, they will need to raise money. Or else they will have to steal. It is a problem, Thomas imagines, faced by a great many Londoners.

A man approaches the stairs. It takes Thomas some time to understand why he notices him. There have been others walking past, some openly staring at them, assessing their wealth, their station. Others yet have sought out the stairs as they have: as a place to rest. One old woman sat to feed the pigeons from a tin of dug-up grubs, cooing sweet nothings and all the while gently smoking from the shafts of her high boots.

This man is different. He moves briskly without wishing to disclose his haste, as though he is straining at the lead of his own discretion. A man in his fifties, bald, a crick in his neck that tilts chin to shoulder. But it is not this that draws Thomas’s eye. He only makes sense of it after the man has turned and darted down the alley by the side of the church. Everyone else who walked towards them, past the various islands of spectacle that dot the square, veered off somewhere, even if only for a moment. The Smoke made sure of it: it called to them as they passed, pulled them towards its centre, as though they were celestial bodies passing the weight of the sun. In his repressed hurry, walking through the siren song of sin, this man alone — the man with the bent neck — never once veered.

He is eating sweets.

There can be no other explanation. But something else tugs at Thomas, a memory older than the discovery of sweets, if not by much.

“Charlie,” he says abruptly, startling Livia out of her doze. “He once told me he saw an angel. Right here on the market square. An angel with a crooked neck.”

Livia stares after Thomas when he jumps up and runs to the alley. But the man is long gone.

“Is he important?”

“Charlie thought so,” Thomas replies. “In any case, it’s more than just chance. Two sightings on the very same square. He must have business here.”

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