When I got back to King’s Cross I decided to check my email again at the local library. This time the little room with the table had some open seats, and I settled myself down in one of them to look over my inbox in relative comfort. Across from me a couple was sitting, a young girl with long straight hair looking at her laptop and next to her, her apparent boyfriend, tall, burly, round-faced, with a bandanna around his head, and a cellphone he couldn’t get to work.

She asked him a murmured question I couldn’t catch.

“Pretentious and in love with money, that’s what’s typical,” he growled in response, still staring down at his phone and working the buttons.

She murmured something else, sounding slightly doubtful.

“That’s what they’re like here. Pretentious and in love with money.”

Again, a murmur of doubt.

“Well you’ve come to the wrong bloody city then,” he said. “That’s what’s typical here. Pretentious and in love with money.” Then he gave up on his phone and went outside to see if he could catch a signal.