Then he's licking Caris's palm with his pink tongue, and pulling her down next to him on the damp earth, and Caris is looking up at all the slippers and trainers and stilettos and brogues and boots and sandals and mocassins and Kickers and flip-flops above her while George feasts on her young body, and she's thinking about all the things George promises her and how he will take her away from the Vale and the mesh of streets she's grown up in, and that it doesn't matter that the ground is hard and that George's bones bruise her, and that the smell of him is slightly disgusting. I love him, she thinks.