“We will freeze to death,” Thomas whispers next to him, only half joking, and closes the gap between their backs so their spines can pool their bony warmth.

They lie like that for half the night, strangers coughing around them, a mermaid dancing on dirty skin, her breasts shrivelling, expanding, winking with every twitch of the coachman’s mighty hand.

By dawn, the boys are so stiff, they have to support each other as they limp into the coach. They crawl onto padded benches and drift into a state more stupor than sleep.

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The coach ride has the texture of a dream: half a dozen impressions sewn together with no reference to time. They set off in twilight, amongst undulating hills; pit towers and smokestacks dotting the horizon. The sounds of travel seem to reach them through their skins as much as their ears, clot together into lumps of noise they are too tired to unpick: the churning of the muddy wheels, the crack of the coachman’s whip, the frightened whinny of the horse when it slips in a puddle. Once, Thomas wakes to see the ruin of a windmill studded with tiny birds: the sun at its back and the coach riding through its mile-long shadow. Then, the moments miles apart but adjacent in his consciousness, separated only by the closing of his eyes, they arrive. The coach halts before the long flank of a stone building painted dark by rain. A butler runs out, umbrella in hand, and escorts them the ten steps from coach to side door, gravel crunching under their feet.

“Delighted to see you have arrived, Mr. Argyle, Mr. Cooper. You will be hungry, I presume? If you’ll follow me to the breakfast room.”

At the mention of breakfast, Charlie’s stomach growls like an ill-used pet.

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They sit at breakfast. The room is large and formal, the tablecloth starched; the chairs high-backed and stiff; the cutlery elegant silver. The table seats ten, but the boys are the only ones in attendance. They perch shabbily — their clothes rumpled, their hair unkempt, their hands all too hastily washed — afraid they’ll stain the upholstery. The butler has left them. A door to their left admits kitchen smells but has not yet produced any food; cold heavy rain running down the glass veranda doors.