It was an accident, unsought, irreversible. Livia has watched him struggling against it ever since, cheeks bunched, fingers picking at the scab that runs past his temple, resting his eyes on her only in moments of distraction, dark, unflinching eyes, taking her in. When his Smoke rises, as in London it must, she is there amongst its flavours, dissolved in fear and want and spite. He cannot spit, it seems, without her presence being written in the bile.

She frowns, lingers over the thought, shies at the threshold of another. For there is more to it yet. Thomas has noticed her.

She has noticed him too.

It is odd that this truth should come with so much anger.

“I am in love with Charlie,” she whispers, defiantly, and watches a skein of Smoke crawl out of Thomas’s sleeping form and hover above him like a second blanket. A boy with a dirty soul. He will spoil your dress if you step too close.

But Livia is no longer wearing dresses.

She slips off the stool, slides onto her knees, the miner’s trousers so dirty that they cushion the knees like felt patches. Thomas is a foot away, is hateful to her, a trial to which she must submit. She leans forward, stretches her neck, seeking to understand him and, in understanding, dismiss him; purge him from her thoughts. She slurps his Smoke like soup. Inhales him, tastes him, and learns nothing she did not already know. This is he: anger and strength. It’s her own Smoke that shocks her. It leaps unbidden, a little pink plume that forms a whirlpool in front of her breath, then spirals up, towards the ceiling. It’s like picking up your diary and finding you wrote a name in it over and over while you were not looking. Thomas’s name; thick and ragged, like she was punishing the quill. She recoils, jumps to her feet, disperses her Smoke with dismayed hands.

“Dinner, my dear,” Grendel’s voice calls from the kitchen. “Try to wake your friend. It’ll do him good.”

ф

They eat in anger. When Thomas learns that Charlie did not come at the appointed hour — and that Livia neglected to wake him — his mood sours and soon colours the mash he is shovelling into his mouth. Livia, too, tastes Smoke with each spoonful, though she does not visibly show. Between them, Grendel sits, unperturbed, imperturbable, a crooked-necked Jesus at supper, sharing out their meagre loaf of bread.

“You woke with an appetite!” he keeps praising Thomas. “Tomorrow you will be strong enough to meet your friend yourself.”