The following morning, Lace woke to the beauty of a London dawn chorus. No starlings or blackbirds sang – this was the song of the bin men and the hulking great wagons that roared whilst the good folk they served tried to slumber. You could even smell one of these vehicles long before you could hear one, especially when they were reversing. As usual, the men in the orange suits were bellowing at the top of their voices, shouting to each other, and daring one another to feed the great grey beast faster and faster, so that they could get away to their other jobs, the ones where they did not have to inhale the stench of days’ old rubbish and the hum of their neighbours’ discarded Sunday roasts.
Lace was awake and alert in seconds. She had slept so well that her duvet was still in the same po
