At last Katerina looked up. The man standing above her looked in his thirties, tall and broad. He was wearing baggy, faded jeans like her own and a flimsy, dark blue anorak. His eyes were bright black and his face unshaven. He spoke with something of an accent: foreign, eastern European perhaps. "It's none of your business and my name isn't 'Pretty'!" she said and made another attempt to get past him but the wall of a kiosk and a bench blocked her path. "No need to be in a hurry, Pretty," said the big man, unabashed. He manoeuvred her a little more tightly into the corner made by the bench. "You're boyfriend look after you, does he?" he asked.
     "Yes he does," lied Katerina. "Now will you get out of my way?" Her annoyance was turning into fright, but surely nothing could happen to her in the middle of this crowd.
     "I've seen you around here a lot," said the stranger. "Your train taking a while to come in, is it?" Katerina didn't answer but before she had decided to cry out or try and break free, a boy in an improbably long and brightly coloured green coat stumbled out of the crowd, tripping over his own wheeled bag as he turned clumsily and crashed into the tall stranger who had her trapped. "I'm so sorry," he said blunderingly, picking up his dropped tickets and dropping them again immediately. "'More haste, less speed,' they say," he added cheerfully. "Oh do excuse me," he blustered obliviously. "It's just this coat…" The tall man turned his wolvish eyes on the hapless traveller and decided he wasn't worth wasting breath on. "See you around, Pretty," he said and chucked her under the chin, letting his tongue slide along the sharp line of his upper teeth as though in anticipation of a more rewarding meeting. Katerina shuddered. It was time to move on. Living beneath the jigsaw puzzle towers and glassy dazzle of St Pancras was no longer safe if guys like that had noticed her, but where could she go? "Thank you, Fool," she said to the green clad boy.
     "What for?" asked the Fool.Katerina laughed despite her fright. "Just thank you," she said.Katerina abandoned her trip to the washroom. She didn't want to spend another moment in the domain of the predator ('hyena-man' she thought) but the issue of the pen still bothered her. She'd been carrying her black canvas backpack casually on one shoulder; now she arranged it more comfortably on her back and headed for the station entrance, exiting through the high glass arches and down the marble staircase to turn right and follow the curve of the gothic brickwork out to the six lanes of traffic that was Euston Road. She looked up at the great clock hovering like a captured moon at the top of the tower. It read eleven ten. There was no way the Knight of Cups (just umbrella man, she corrected herself) would still be hanging around the bank. Still, there was no harm in having a look. Adept at the dangerous choreography of car dodging, she crossed the great road between the slow relentless boulders of red double-deckers and the stop-start torrent of Volkswagens, Toyotas, Citroens, Ford whites and a sparkling green Lamborghini. Her family hadn't owned a car but Petar was obsessed with them and had plastered photographs from magazines all over his bedroom wall: better than the sulky British pop-stars that had gazed down from her own bedroom walls, she thought, the teen-dreams of Jelka.