One

Jane hurried along Camden Road, one long thoroughfare of orange marks, one of the few places in London where he felt safe despite the road being topped and tailed by white areas: Camden to the south and north, Holloway. Perhaps it was a subconscious alertness to do with this new job; he always felt energised by some new task. Now he felt a tingle in the small of his back at the sight of the petrol station. He had passed this way so many times before without a pause, but now it radiated danger, or at last its potential. Jane tried to see where the threat was emanating. Like many buildings – especially one whose structure was a cheap amalgam of plastic and neon – this one had suffered from the initial blast and subsequent weathering; the shop was little more than a collapsed cabin, the forecourt a black scree of exploded fuel, glass and vehicles.

It took a while to work out why he felt so jumpy, but then he saw the service hatch in the ground; it was off-kilter, no longer flush with its housing. The explosion might have caused it to come off, but if it had it would have turned it into a weapon, flinging it a great distance through the air. This was a lid replaced by someone who didn't want something to be found, or dragged back into position by someone hiding inside. That thought loosened him a little, and he crouched, trying to quell the melting feeling in his bowels, knowing that to shit or piss here was to bang a dinner gong.

He had to check it. What if it was as he had first thought, a cover for something meant to remain secret? That could only mean food. He would take a bite, just a little to keep him going, and leave a message for whoever had secreted it, telling of a safe place where resources were pooled and a resistance was being established. Maybe the people who used this den were dead and he'd find a treasure trove that he could later lay claim to. If he didn't, someone else would.

Jane scanned the road north and south again, and peered at the houses of Tufnell Park that rose behind the petrol station. He held his breath so that he could hear more acutely over the suck and blow of his breath in the bicycle mask. No movement. Fear opened up in him like a black flower in poor soil. He picked a way through the rubble of bricks and concrete. Rain fell like something forced through an atomiser, adding faint noise to the picture before him. A hand went to his chest. The wound here that the man down at the lake had inflicted with that sword of his was healed as well as it ever would, but adrenaline was like a wormhole to that moment, opening him up with the memory of pain.

Jane thought of the letter he had begun, years ago, in reply to his son. He had yet to end it and knew that it would never come to Take care, all my love. He kept the latest pages on him, along with a supply of fresh sheets, so that he could add more whenever he was faced with a long wait or a sleepless night. When he felt lonely, or afraid, he found that it helped to shape the part he was working on. Stanley became his distraction and his saviour, although there was really no 'became' about it. He had always played this role.

Where was he up to? The delivery room. He had been describing the moment of Stanley's birth.

Hey Stan, you know, your mummy burst into tears when I told her you were OK, and that you were a boy. I cried myself when the midwife put you in my arms. I sat with you while they took care of Mummy and even then, minutes old, you had your own little characteristics, your own set of expressions. I had to shade your eyes because the sunlight was streaming into the delivery room. I held your tiny hand in mine, and smelled the miraculous scent that was rising from your head. I will never forget that moment for as long as I live. I loved you all through Mummy's pregnancy, even though I didn't know what you looked like or how you might behave. In the second when you were born, I knew that I would do anything in my power to protect you from harm.