On the far side of the river Fleet, the houses are old to the point of Olde Worlde. They’re not so formally grand as the one Diana Hunter turned into an electromagnetic oubliette, but they are in better repair, the brick and paint washed, the sash windows glossy. The houses closest to the main road are bigger, and mostly divided into flats. On the side by the old heath, where parents and children have flown kites on windy days for as long as people knew in London how to make them, there is a row of cottages, and it is here that Mielikki Neith finds first a rose garden and then a gardener.