“We must go,” Charlie whispers behind her. “Find Mowgli.”

“Yes.” Livia stands up, looks down herself. The miner’s shirt is ripped and stained, the blood already half dried. She thinks she can smell it. “I must get changed.”

“There is no time. And you have no other clothes.”

“I must get changed,” she repeats, brusquely, then rushes into her mother’s room.

When she emerges Livia is wearing one of the dresses Sebastian brought for her mother. It is too large for her and feels alien after days spent in men’s clothing. It is as though she has stepped back into another life. She raises the hem as she steps over Julius.

The boys stare at her when she enters the kitchen, even Thomas, beaten, miserable Thomas. She has scrubbed her face and hands with lye soap and a boar-bristle brush. Her body underneath the dress remains as filthy as ever. There just wasn’t the time.

“Hurry,” she says, needlessly. The two boys rush past her at once, each eager not to touch her, now that she is once again a lady. There is a bulk to the petticoat that gives new width to her hips.

Before leaving, Livia returns to Mrs. Grendel one more time.

“Are you all right?” she asks and then, when the woman does not respond: “What is your name, Mrs. Grendel? Your Christian name?”

The delay in the answer is such that Livia has already turned and walked three steps before she hears it.

“Berta,” the beaten woman says. “Berta Grendel.”

They do not say “Good-bye, Berta.” They simply leave.

ф

Thomas leads. He is spent, broken, hollow-eyed with fear. And yet he leads them, towards the sewer entrance he discovered. Livia and Charlie follow, hand in hand. Her fine dress elicits comments, catcalls, caps doffed in mock homage. London, a city of louts; sleepless, even in the middle of the night, a steady stream of figures peopling its streets. She trades pallid Smoke with her hecklers, stains grey the ruffles of her sleeves. There is, in her Smoke, a tiny whiff of her own thrill at being noticed.

It isn’t long before they reach their destination. An unmarked building, its gateway leading to a courtyard; and there, set into the courtyard’s wall, the brick-rimmed entrance to a stairwell, leading underground. A squalid place, anonymous, the site of an old cesspool now pumped empty. The courtyard is littered with construction materials. A chalkboard screwed into a wall marks the rota of work shifts. Thomas told them that when he found it earlier that day, the entrance had been guarded by a foreman with a ledger, ticking off names against a list. There is no foreman now, nor any workers, no one to tell them that they must not enter at their leisure. There is only one hitch, a problem so simple it has eluded their plans. The entire gateway is blocked by an iron gate.