Hours later, when he comes to his senses, darkness has fallen, and he finds himself in a neighbourhood he doesn’t recognise. How did he get here? He touches the bloody cut on his chin. His palms are scraped raw. Tears spring in his eyes. So tired. He longs for home with the desperation of a child. That’s all he wants, all he’s ever wanted: to go home. But where? Where is that place? Not the land he’s fled, or the flat with the mean drunk. Nor any place on the earth he can think of.

Katerina. So kind and sweet. She would take him in, he is sure of it, if only for one night. She’ll make him a cup of tea, soothe his fears, assure him that everything will work out in the end.

But he can’t go back. If he were ever to see her or Rennie again, he would tell them his story, the one that is etched in blood on his skin for all the world to see. An unwanted, bastard child, tossed in the gutter and left to die.

* * *

For days, he wanders the city, roaming the streets at night, sleeping rough, a wretched, loathsome creature, pustular and dirty, fit for nothing but the abattoir. Each evening, from midnight to the hour of the wolf, he walks along the river, trying to work up the courage to throw himself into the roiling brown waters.

Just after midnight, he stands on his chosen spot on the Left Bank. Beginning his journey at the tip of the Île de la Cité and heading west. Halfway to the Pont Neuf, he sees a scrum of rabble rousers. The lamplight glints off the hair of the boy in the center of the group, as he holds a wine bottle by the neck and dumps its contents on another boy’s head. ‘Plus de vin!’ he cries, grabbing a bottle out of yet another’s hands. Vidor.

He hangs back in the shadows cast by the trees overhead and when the friends grow tired of their drunken revelry and disperse, Vidor continues along the river, talking to himself, or tossing back his head to howl at the moon.

He follows, keeping out of the light. It’s clear his nemesis is very drunk, weaving amongst the trees and benches and stumbling on the cobbles.

Keeping ten paces between them, they pass by the Musée d’Orsay and come to a deserted stretch of the river. Where is he going? Vidor whirls suddenly and squints into the darkness. ‘Who are you? Why are you following me?’

He holds back in the shadows, waiting for Vidor to continue on his way. But the boy is two sheets to the wind and spoiling for a fight.

Stepping forward, Vidor holds up the bottle. ‘Wanna drink?’ But then his face changes when he sees who it is, tracking his movements.