She didn't get it either, though she thought enough about Ben. She was not an instructed young woman — or girl, for in fact she was not yet eighteen,

Ben's age — but the subject of his age had not come up. She thought he was probably about thirty-five: she liked older men, she knew.

One of the things they had in common, though they did not know it, was that both had had such a hard childhood. She had left school and run away to London from bad parents, had stolen money, been a thief for a while, and then talked the landlord of the building that housed the minicab firm and this tart's room up the stairs into letting her have the room when the previous girl left. She was persuasive. She impressed. She had learned that she usually got her way with people. She had met many different kinds, but nothing like Ben. He was outside anything she had been told about, or seen on the television, or knew from experience. When she saw him naked for the first time, she thought, Wow! That's not human. It was not so much the hairiness of him, but the way he stood, his big shoulders bent — that barrel chest — the dangling fists, the feet planted apart ... She had never seen anything like him. And then there were the barking or grunting roars as he came, the whimpers in his sleep — yet if he wasn't human, what was he? A human animal, she concluded, and then joked with herself, Well, aren't we all?

Johnston did not interfere again, but he was waiting for some opportunity he could turn to his advantage. It came. Ben asked Rita to go with him 'to the place where you get birth certificates'. Rita, familiar with the world of casual work, asked why didn't he try 'to work casual' and the story of the building site came out. Her first reaction was that if anyone cheated Ben then Johnston could sort him out — but knew this would not happen. She asked where Ben had got it into his head he must have a birth certificate, heard about the old woman who said it would help get him unemployment benefit. 'And then what?' Rita asked, really curious about what unnecessarily lawful plans might be fermenting in that shaggy head.