Across the junction of West End Lane, Angie Boyle steps out of the bank that used to be Parrs and which was once an endless swathe of forest from Hyde Park to Bushey Park. The road between the clothing store and the bank was an old field lane near the parish boundary that hopped over the Cunebourne before climbing to the village of West End. Until the city grew around them, two piebald horses grazed in acres of green. Before the woodland was cleared to make pasture, only an unbroken cycle of spring rains, summer breezes, autumn leaf falls and winter frosts marked the passing of centuries.

Angie Boyle reaches for the cigarettes in her bag. Lighter click, eyes closed and breathe. There. Now to Argos for something pink for the wee’un’s birthday. Angie Boyle who goes to mass when she can, who believes in the triune God and said as much at her confirmation on the day fire broke out on Apollo 13, 321,860km above the church in Shanaglish where the geriatric priest mumbled the Sanctus, his hand shaking so much she thought the wine would spill over the lip of the chalice. Cruel that the old fella should still be working. Boyle looks up as she exhales and her gaze rests on a slim young man with a buzzcut leaning against the wall of the bank, smoking too, a Japanese tattoo emblazoning his neck. Boyle wonders what would induce a man to have his throat tattooed, what she would have to say to a son who came home looking like that. Who’d give the fella a job? And Gabriele Vezzali, an entrepreneur who owns two bars and a barbershop in Exmouth Market feels her eyes upon him.

Where foxes once played in ryegrass at the road’s edge, Ahmad Khan, reed thin and bony steps out of the internet café next to the bank carrying three sheets of A4 paper for his daughter, a frail eight year old who seldom speaks, Khan’s over large navy suit flapping like a great bird around him. Tall for an Afghan, tall for a man his age, sixty in a year, Khan’s otherwise clean shaven face dominated by a bushy moustache and his hair the burgundy hue of one whose eyes have seen the prophet’s tomb, peace be upon him. Ahmad Khan walking with small, dainty steps across the road, carrying fifteen pennies worth of photocopies for Sohelia’s school project. Now to the market to talk to Ibrahim. This then that then that then this, and so the day is done. Ahmed Khan, glancing at the man with the Japanese tattoo, the defined musculature beneath his tight blue shirt, the line of his jaw and fire detonates deep within the bombproof bunker he has built inside his heart. The aftershock brings a bead of perspiration to his brow, and only his prayers, those frantic paramedics rushing to clear damage caused by yet another blast keep his legs moving and his body upright. Shaking the impulse from his fingers, Khan disappears behind a Waitrose truck heading north as the clown watches. All this scum his magnum opus. A crusted canker on the virtuous green, a suppurating wound that never heals. Crossing the junction, he strides into the chemist’s next to the internet café.