It’s not brave of me, he thought. I know I can do it, I’m arat.

Deborah was looking at him. From time to time her eyes flittedaway towards the view, but it was him she was conscious of. Shelooked at him with amazement. He looked back at her. He was awashwith gratitude. It was so good, so nice to talk to someone who wasnot a rat, or a bird, or a spider.

‘It must be amazing to be able to do what all the rats do,’ shesaid, studying their massed ranks. They stood a little way behind,quiet and attentive, fidgeting a little when unobserved but hushingwhen Saul turned to gaze at them.

Saul laughed at what she said.

‘Amazing? I don’t fucking think so.’ He could not resist bitching,even though she would not understand. ‘Let me tell you about rats,’he said. ‘Rats do nothing. All day. They eat any old crap they canfind, run around pissing against walls, they shag occasionally — orso I’m led to believe — and they fight over who gets to sleep inwhich patch of sewer. Sure, they think they’re the reason the worldwas invented. But they’re nothing.’

‘Sounds like people!’ said Deborah and laughed delightedly as ifshe had said something clever. She repeated it.

‘They’re nothing like people,’ Saul said quietly. ‘That’s a tiredold myth.’

He asked her about herself and she was vague about her situation.She would not explain her homelessness, muttering darkly about notbeing able to handle something. Saul felt guilty but he was not thatinterested. Not that he did not care: he did, he was appalled at herstate and, even alienated from her city as he was, he felt the oldfury against the government so assiduously trained into him by hisfather. He cared deeply. But at that moment he wanted to talk to hernot for herself particularly but because she was a person. Anyperson. As long as she kept talking and listening, he was notconcerned about what she might say. And he asked her about herselfbecause he was hungry for her company.

He heard a sudden sound of flapping, something like heavy cloth.He felt a brief gust of wind in his face. He looked up, but there wasnothing.

‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘Never mind rats being amazing. Do youwant to come back to my house?’

She wrinkled her nose again.

‘The one that smells like that?’

‘No. I was thinking of going back to my real place for a bit.’ Hesounded calm, but his breath came short and fast at the thought ofreturning. Something in her remarks about rats had reminded him ofwhere he came from. Cut off from King Rat, he wanted to return, touchbase.

He missed his dad.

Deborah was happy to visit his house. Saul put her on his backagain and set off, with the rats in tow, across the face of London,across a terrain that had quickly become familiar to him.

Sometimes Deborah buried her face in his shoulder, sometimes sheleaned back alarmingly and laughed. Saul shifted with her to maintainhis balance.

His progress was not as rapid as King Rat’s or Anansi’s, but hemoved fast. He stayed high, loath to touch the ground, a vague rulehe remembered from a children’s game. Sometimes the platform of roofsstopped short and he had no option but to plunge down the brick, byfire escape or drain or broken wall, and scurry across a short spaceof pavement before scrambling up above the streets again.

Everywhere around him he heard the sound of the rats. They kept upwith him, moving by their own routes, disappearing and reappearing,boiling in and out of his field of vision, anticipating him andfollowing him. There was something else, a presence he was vaguelyaware of: the source of that flapping sound. Time and again he sensedit, a faint flurry of wind or wings brushing his face. His momentumwas up and he did not stop, but he nursed the vague sense thatsomething kept up with him.

Periodically he would pause for breath and look around him. Hispassage was quick. He followed a map of lights, keeping parallel toEdgware Road, shadowing it as it became Maida Vale. He followed theroute of the 98 bus, passed landmarks he knew well, like the towerwith an integument of red girders which jutted out above its roof,making a cage.

The buildings around them began to level out; the spaces betweentowers grew larger. Saul knew where they were: in the stretch ofdeceptively suburban housing just before Kilburn High Road. Terracognita, thought Saul. Home ground.

He crossed to the other side of the road so fast that Deborah washardly aware of it. Saul took off into the dark between main roads,bridging the gap between Kilburn and Willesden, eager to returnhome.

They stood before Terragon Mansions. Saul was afraid.

He felt fraught, short of breath. He listened to the stillness,realized that the escort of rats had evaporated soundlessly. He wasalone with Deborah.

His eyes crawled up the dull brick, weaving between windows, manynow dark, a few lit behind net curtains. There at the top, the holethrough which his father had plummeted. Still not fixed, pending morepolice investigation, he supposed, though now the absence wasdisguised by transparent plastic sheets. The tiny fringe of raggedglass was still just visible in the window-frame.

‘I had to leave here in a hurry,’ he whispered to Deborah. ‘My dadfell out of that window and they reckon I pushed him.’

She gazed at him in horror.

‘Did you?’ she squeaked, but his face silenced her.

He walked quietly to the front door. She stood behind him, huggingherself against the chill, looking nervously about. He caressed thedoor, effortlessly and silently slipping the lock. Saul wandered ontothe stairs. His feet made no sound. He moved as if dazed. Behind himcame Deborah, in fits and starts, her ebullience gone with his. Shedragged her feet as if she were whining, but she made no sound.

The door to his apartment was criss-crossed with blue tape. Saulstared at it and considered how it made him feel. Not violated oroutraged, as he would have supposed. He felt oddly reassured, as ifthis tape secured his house from outsiders, sealing it like a timecapsule.

He tugged gently at it. It came away in his hand, airy andineffectual, as if it had been waiting for him, eager to give itselfup. He pushed the door open and stepped into the darkness where hisfather had died.

It was cold, as cold as the night when the police had arrived. Hedid not turn on the lights. What filtered up from the streets wasenough for him. He did not waste time, pushed open the door of thesitting-room and entered.

The room was bare, had been stripped of possessions, but henoticed that only in passing. He stared at the jagged window full on.He dared it to unsettle him, to sap his strength. It was just a hole,he thought, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it just a hole? The plastic billowedback and forth with a noise like whips cracking.

‘Saul, I’m scared…’

He realized belatedly that Deborah could hardly see. She stood atthe threshold to the room, hesitant. He knew what she could see, hisobscure form against the dark orange of the distant streetlamps. Saulshook himself in anger. He had been using her with such ease he hadforgotten that she was real. He strode across the room and huggedher.

He wrapped himself around her with an affection she poured backinto him. It was not sexual, though he sensed that she expected it tobe, and might not have minded. But he would have felt manipulativeand foul and he liked her and pitied her and was so, so grateful toher. They held each other and he realized that he was trembling asmuch as she. Not all rat yet, then, he thought ruefully. She’s afraidof the dark, he thought. What’s my excuse?

There was a book in the middle of the floor.

He saw it suddenly over her shoulder. She felt him stiffen andnearly shrieked in terror, twisting to see whatever had shocked him.He hurriedly hushed her, apologized. She could not see the book inthe dark.