anxious not to offend him.
Cormac mentally groaned, although at least he was on safer ground. He did feel uncomfortable, wondering what his mother had told Lissa, what she told everyone else in the village. She didn’t know what he’d seen, what it was like out there. Neither did Lissa, neither did Emer. Nobody did.
He wrenched his memory back to his unpleasant afternoon.
It was horrible to see.
I know.
THE ODDEST THING had been that Cormac had just been thinking how surprised he was by the city, how it wasn’t at all what he’d expected. From the papers you’d think it was all pollution and crime, but instead he found himself daily impressed by the layers of history, from the Roman walls in the City to the mudlarks down by the Thames, searching for ancient coins and treasure from the two thousand years’ worth of boats that had traveled up and down the river. And the contrasts, like where he was now, with the shining modern glass towers and the beautifully preserved old Georgian buildings of weavers and artisans past. Walking to his next appointment, he had passed an ancient building where they made up coats of arms and that housed the great merchant companies of the cities, then, being characteristically early, he had taken a detour to see the extraordinary inns of Chancery, with their fountains and gardens, mysterious shops selling wigs and pens, and signposts to the “Yeoman’s Office.” Cormac had never been academic, but even he was quietly taken aback to walk past the redbrick Middle Temple Hall and read a small plaque modestly mentioning that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was first performed within its walls; he had then passed the famous circular church of the Knights Templars, with its gray stone effigies laid to rest.
It was a completely different world from any he had ever known; he felt there was a surprise behind every corner in London, a sense too of the huge weight of history, commerce, and grandeur that made it easy—perhaps even necessary—for Westminster to send a bunch of young lads from small towns far, far away to fight and die in a distant desert.
He was in a thoughtful frame of mind when he reached his next appointment, and what happened next did not change it.
The house, some distance away, was located down a quiet residential street, tucked away just across from the river, where the great steel towers met the Georgian byways of Shoreditch. It had big, flat-fronted windows, with brightly polished panes of ancient glass in freshly painted pale green frames, and neat potted plants of lavender and small orange trees. It was a beautiful house, immaculately restored, and Cormac could only wonder about the amount of money invested in such a project. He’d double-checked the address, but no, it was here all right.
An incredibly beautiful woman answered the door: tanned skin, blond hair tumbling over a pretty, flowing dress. It was a sunny day, and the yellow light pooling into the lane made her appear to glow.
“You’re from the hospital?”
Cormac showed his badge.
“Not the Social?”
The way she said “the Social” sounded odd with her posh accent; it wasn’t, in his experience, the kind of thing women who looked like that and lived in multimillion-pound houses normally said. They normally never met with Social Services at all.
“Just the health worker,” he said, almost adding “ma’am” to it, her tone was so imperious.
She sighed. “I’m sure you feed back to your spy network,” she said.
Cormac wrinkled his brow and tried to imagine what that might be like. “Sorry,” he said. “Is this a bad time?”
She shrugged in bad grace and let him in.
INSIDE THE HOUSE was even more beautiful: architecturally designed, full of light and slick lines. Expensive-looking art books were piled up heavily on the tables; abstract pictures hung on the walls, which Cormac eyed with a newly found interest. It was a haven: it looked like a magazine shoot. Inside the vast light-filled kitchen, which had been extended back over the glorious garden, were folding doors that today were flung open, meaning the indoors and outdoors mingled, and you could hear birds squawking and bees buzzing—the first time, Cormac realized with a start, that he’d heard these things since he’d gotten to London. A tall, incredibly handsome man wearing tortoiseshell glasses and a perfectly ironed linen shirt was making a green juice in a blender. He turned it off and gave the same distant smile to Cormac. The pair of them were so tall and