He had to stop and transfer the bag from right hand to left, left hand to right, as he went up the stairs, hauling himself along by the chipped blue-painted handrail. When he finally reached the platform, Patel set the bag down gratefully on the concrete with a grunt, and rubbed his hands, looking up at the red LEDs of the train status sign to see when the next one would be along. I, the sign said, BANK, 2 minutes. He leaned against the wall of the glass-sided station-platform shelter, out of reach of the light chill east wind, and put the bag down at his feet, sighing and gazing out over the bottom half of the Isle of Dogs. Mostly what Patel was looking at, under the morning's featureless overcast sky, was a vast construction site: the new tunnels for the extension of the Jubilee Line of the Underground were being driven through here, amid a welter of orange-painted cranes, lifters and mechanical digging machines with exotic foreign names, all of which made it almost impossible to see Island Gardens on the far side of the construction. Patel sighed and thought about the morning's class schedule. This was his second year of a putative three years at London Guildhall University, up in the City. He was well on his way toward a degree in mathematics with business applications, though what good that was really going to do him, at the end of the day, he wasn't certain. There would be time to start worrying about jobhunting, though, next year. Right now, Patel was doing well enough, his student grant was safe, and whatever attention he wasn't spending on his studies was mostly directed toward making sure he had enough money to get by. Though at least he didn't have to worry about rent as yet – courtesy of his folks – there were other serious matters at hand. Clothes … textbooks … partying. From down the track came a demure hum and a thrum of rails as the little three-car red-and-blue Docklands train slid toward the station.