Stray Souls

Book 1: Magicals Anonymous

by Kate Griffin

Genres: Contemporary Fantasy; Occult & Supernatural; Action & Adventure

Synopsis

LONDON'S SOUL IS MISSING. When Sharon Li unexpectedly discovers she's a shaman, it's not a moment too soon: London's soul is lost. Using her newfound oneness with the City, she sets about saving London from inevitable demise, but the problem is she has no clue where to start. Meanwhile, a mysterious gate has opened, and there are creatures loose that won't wait for her to catch up before they go out hunting. Now Sharon and her motley crew of magical misfits must find a way to save the world. . .

Release date: October 30, 2012

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 459

Sample

It was raining when Sharon Li became one with the city.

The rain may have had nothing to do with her moment of profound spiritual revelation but is worth mentioning just in case. The kebab she was eating definitely had nothing to do with it but will prove relevant in the sense that if she hadn’t dropped it onto her trousers, she might have stood in the rain a little longer marvelling at the majesty of the universe, which could have had a long-term medical impact and thus affected the course of events yet to come. As it was, the sensation of orange goo oozing into the fabric of her jeans would provoke her to take practical action where other minds might simply have dissolved in mystical wonder.

Meanwhile she stood, bits of salad falling from their plastic box, her body temporarily forgotten. The rain rolled down her face, glued her black hair to her pine-coloured skin, deepened her orange top to sodden brown and seeped through the soles of her shoes. On a nearby railway line a goods train clanked by at ten miles an hour, its wheels screaming like golems being beaten to death. Two streets away the night bus threw up a sheet of dirty water from a blocked drain over a drunken group from a stag party wrapped in cling film and not much else. A car alarm wailed as a trainee thief smashed a window and made a grab for the mobile phone left on a seat. A door quietly closed as a husband, heading off for the flight to his conference in Spain, tried not to disturb his wife; she, entirely awake, lay sensing the warmth he had left behind. A fox stopped on its walk through the night and turned its head towards the sky as if wondering which star tonight shone for it behind the bank of sodium cloud. Paint dripped down the metal shutter of an off-licence from an amateur attempt at graffiti. A lorry laden with tomorrow’s milk skipped a red light because it could, and just tonight, just this once, the speed camera forgot to flash.

And for a moment, just one brilliant, burning, unbearable moment, Sharon Li knew everything there was to know about the city, every street and every stone; and her thoughts were in the wheels of the cars splashing through the puddles and her breath was in the gasps of air drawn through the railway tunnels and her heart beat with the turning of the river.

Then, because the human mind is only capable of comprehending so much, she forgot.

That was then.

This is now.

He snuck in the back way as always, hoping that today his PA would get bored of trying to catch him. But there she was, as always, waiting at the bottom of the lift, papers in one hand, half-eaten egg and cress sandwich in the other.

He puts his face into neutral-yet-resilient and summons the lift. She slips in beside him, as if she’d casually been waiting at this place, at this time, a fortunate coincidence, two professionals having a chance encounter. And says, “Have you read it?”

“Good morning Mr Mayor, how are you? Why, isn’t it lovely if surprising to see you, I just happened to be passing!” he intones.

“Good morning, Mr Mayor. How are you?”

“I’m very well, thank you, Kelly, and yourself?”

“Absolutely topping, Mr Mayor, completely the best. Would you like a foot massage and a cup of tea before commencing the business of the day?”

He sighs. Every day they have this encounter, and every day it ends the same way. “What was the first question?”

“Have you read it?”

“Vague as that is, let’s play safe and go with no.”

“Mr Mayor—”

“Kelly, I’ve got things to do, people to see…”

“I really feel it’s important.”

“You said that last week, with the white paper on basilisk activity in the Barking sewage works.”

“Well, it is important–you can’t think it’s not.”

“I’m sure it’s important. I just wish you hadn’t tried to prove your point by sending me on a field trip.”

“Mr Mayor,” she tries again, at once wheedling and determined, “just take a look at this.”

She hands him a paper. Since she’s been his PA, Kelly has got good at knowing just how much paper to give him at any time. Only one sheet of A4 and he feels patronised; an entire folder and he won’t bother reading. Five to seven pages of essential notes have become the standard, with the really important stuff, the absolutely vital stuff, tucked in around page 3.

He reads page 1 and huffs. Flicks to page 2 and sighs. Gets to page 3, shows no reaction, turns to page 4 and…

… turns right back.

She watches his eyes dance over the words as the lift slows to a halt on the top floor. The doors open but he doesn’t move. His lips move silently as if the portion of his brain usually dedicated to absorbing this kind of information is crying out for assistance from any other interested lobes.

He says, “No but what?”

“You’ve found the…”

“Too bloody right, and no, but seriously, what?”

“I told you it was important!”

“Yes but no but I mean sure, I get where this is coming from, but actually—”

“I’m told they get a lot of interest from Facebook.”

“Facebook! Facebook?! I’ve got a city infested with horrors of the night crawling from nether darkness; I’ve got monsters and demons and missing fucking goddesses and creatures whose footsteps burn the night and wards failing and meetings–bloody hell, I’ve got bloody fucking fiscal meetings with the directors’ board–and they’re doing this with Facebook?!”

“That’s how I understand it, Mr Mayor.”

“Couldn’t someone tell them to stop?”

“I’m not sure that would be a good idea.”

“But it’s ridiculous!”

“I think it’s rather sweet.”

He looks up from the paper, and now there’s no attempt to keep the horror off his face.

“ ‘Sweet’?”

“Well, in its way…”

“Kelly, you’re a guardian of the night, a magician who wears black and not for its slimming properties; you’ve been trained in how to kill people in many different ways and when you’re not giving me bad news, you’re in theory running around the city hunting down all the things too nasty to be named, and you think this is sweet?”

She thinks about it. “Beats blood-drenched midnight orgies.”

The hall was hung with dusty red velour curtains. There were orange plastic chairs stacked against the wall, and a trestle table bearing an unwashed coffee mug, a free newspaper from yesterday afternoon, a ruptured tennis ball and a discarded umbrella with its workings mangled by a strong wind. One door led into the church next door; the other said FIRE ESCAPE and led into the mite-filled alley between the hall and the neighbouring barber’s shop.

The barber, Antonio Anthonis, born in Athens, raised on Eurovision, described the hall as “a nice enough place for the kids, yes?”

The vicar’s wife, who handled all the hiring and scheduling of events, described St Christopher’s Hall as “a friendly community venue where people of every age and disposition can come together in celebration of each other and their local area.”

The vicar, the Reverend Adam Weir, with a more liberal understanding of most things than his missus, described it as “twenty-five an hour and you’ll wonder why you’re forking out so much, but, believe me, when you see the other places you’ll just be thrilled. Price goes down to twenty pounds an hour if you can convince me you’re doing something moral or pious, and fifteen an hour if there’s free tea and biscuits. Church reserves the right to take leftovers and I don’t drink Earl Grey.”

Sharon explained what they did.

The vicar listened. His eyes had run politely but thoroughly over Sharon as she’d talked, taking in her ankle-high purple boots, cropped jeans with the tattiness left in, orange tank top and the streaks of electric blue dyed into the front of her hair. He nodded appreciatively at the key bits, though his eyes did eventually start to glaze over.

“So,” she concluded, “I think, yeah, that it’s… it’s moral and has biscuits.”

“Tell you what,” he said. “Throw in an extra packet of Jammie Dodgers and we’ll call it a tenner.”

That was five weeks ago.

She’d had to wait two weeks for Gospel Singing (Level 2) to finish their rehearsal period in the hall, and also, Power Dance (Dance Your Way to the New You!) had got in first to the slot she’d wanted, forcing her to push things back another three weeks. Following her posting of time and place on Facebook and Twitter, the feedback was generally good, though some people did ask if there was a discreet way in.

It had of course been one of the things she’d checked in advance.

She arrived early, while the hall was still occupied by Youth Judo (Discipline, Fitness and Safety for Your Children), and waited outside until the mums had collected their small robed warriors. The instructor was the last to leave. He was a short man with dreads down to his hip and a white duelling shirt that warped under pressure from within. His face was the brown of soil after rain, and his smile was dazzling.

“Dan,” he said, gripping Sharon’s hand with fingers that could have squashed coconuts like a wet sponge. “You must be… What do you guys do?”

“Support group,” Sharon explained.

“First time here, yeah? Where were you before?”

“Nowhere. This is our first meeting ever.”

“Wow, that’s great. Hope it goes well for you.” Another flash of teeth, brilliant in the fading light of evening. “Have a good one, yeah?”

And he too left.

For a moment Sharon stood alone in the hall.

Outside, the sky was a cloud-scudded grey-blue, sliced with falling autumn leaves. From the pub on the corner she could hear students from the local hall of residence discovering just what the deal was with cider and, importantly, what happened after. The smell of paprika drifted in from the restaurant two doors down. Someone dinged their bell as they cycled by. In Exmouth Market, lined with cafés, bars and boutiques, darkness was an invitation to raise the volume. The church and its community hall was a box of silence against the rising sounds of laughter and the clatter of glasses.

She put down her plastic bags on the table. They contained five packets of custard creams, six of Jammie Dodgers, two of chocolate fingers (milk) and two of chocolate fingers (white). A bag of apples to make up for the sweetness of all that had gone before and a bunch of bananas for those who didn’t like apples because, frankly, who didn’t like bananas? A large box of builder’s teabags, a smaller box of Earl Grey. Another small box–of herbal teas (mixed) for those who didn’t like tea–a litre of milk, a box of white sugar, a packet of plastic teaspoons, a packet of plastic cups, a packet of foam cups (heat resistant) and a bundle of paper plates. Two packs of bright red napkins because you never knew, one bottle of instant coffee in case no one drank tea, two litres of orange juice from concentrate, one litre of apple. A kettle. Small, white, plastic. Just in case.

Turned out, the hall had its own kettle. After all, the leaflet did say “amenities provided”.

Approximately half a mile from St Christopher’s Hall, and Gavin McGafferty is about to die.

He doesn’t know it right now; in fact, right now he’s having a hard time thinking of anything through the red haze of contempt clouding his better judgement. He walks, and doesn’t fully grasp where he’s walking, and under his breath he mutters, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fucking…”

A bus sweeps by. It’s his bus. He was waiting for it at the stop outside the chemist, but when it didn’t come fast enough, he started walking to the next, and now there it is, passing by at that perfect point where he’s too far to run, and he knows, he just knows, that it, like everything else, is out to get him.

“Fuck fuck fuck SHIT…”

It is perhaps unfortunate, in a strictly humanitarian sense, that in less than fifty yards Gavin McGafferty will have his throat torn out with a single swipe of a fist-sized claw, his left ear ripped from the side of his face and his pelvis fractured by the sheer weight of creature bowling him to the ground. Nevertheless, his co-workers, when informed of the unfortunate event some twenty-two hours later, will pause a fraction too long as they consider his departure. There may even be some who, going to the bathroom afterwards to compose their faces in an appropriate mask of grief, find themselves looking in the mirror and breathing out a slow sigh of guilty relief. Gavin McGafferty is not a man who endears himself to the universe, and it is in this vein that he understands that the driver of the 159 bus that overtook him on the corner has waited–absolutely waited–just outside his line of sight for the right moment to screw him, personally, over.

The world has been conspiring against Gavin McGafferty from the start. He knows his co-workers talk about him behind his back; he knows that his work–which is fucking good fucking work, FUCK!–has been made to look shit by the apathy and personal hatred of his peers. He knows that no man can achieve perfection against such a world of inadequacy, but most of all he knows, more than anything else, that he is right and everyone else is wrong, and if he looks shit it’s only because the rest of them are out to get him.

“Fucking stupid fucking arsehole…”

He turns onto St John Street and sees the bus stop. The 159 is pulling away, two kids visible in the back seat, framed by the bus’s internal white lights, laughing, probably at him. There’s no one at the bus stop, no one on the road. They’re all on the bus, or inside the last fucking taxi in EC fucking 1, not that they even need it, lazy pricks, because they’re probably not going far, to a wine bar or something, whereas Gavin is going–Gavin is going to—

A motorbike grumbles into life behind him, distracting him from his train of thought. Its engine rumbles, a low throaty growl, then keeps turning over. He crosses the quiet street. The bike is still revving, but now there is something wrong with the sound: a potency, a thickness, a thing within it that…

“Fucking stupid fuck fuck fuck…”

… that pauses for breath?

He hesitates on the edge of the yellow light that frames the empty bus shelter. Something soft presses on a loose cobble stone, which sings a hollow note as it bumps against its neighbours. Other men might have looked back. Other men might have wondered. Gavin McGafferty knows better than to look. Only an idiot looks.

He steps up to the shelter and looks at the timetable. At this time of night, the 159 runs every twenty to twenty-five minutes, which he knows means at least half an hour. And it’ll be full of weirdo druggies and stupid kids, and he’ll be late, which is fucking fine because they can all fucking wait for him anyway but shit shit shit shit…

A ripple in the sound behind him, and it’s louder, and it’s closer, and that ripple–for that is the word–could almost be defined as the sound a soft leathery lip might make as it rubs its way across protruding fanged teeth, while a deep rumble inside a ribcage pressed within a hundred pounds of taut black flesh might yet prove the source of this persistent grumbling.

Idiots look.

Idiots look.

He’s not an idiot. Jesus, he’s Gavin McGafferty, he’s the shit, he’s the stuff, he’s the guy on the up, and all those fucking idiots around him who talk behind his back and try to bring him down because of their envy, their envy for Christ’s sake, they don’t understand. They’ll never get it, they’re the kind of guys who’d look, they’d look and he wouldn’t he wouldn’t he…

Looks.

The start of the scream doesn’t make it all the way to his voice box before it finds itself some three feet away from the air that should have supplied it. The teeth that remove his left ear dig deep enough to crack the solid sphere of his skull like a pistachio. Arguably, it’s the combined weight of Gavin and his attacker hitting the ground that causes the fractured pelvis. But frankly, given the time the paramedics spend trying to identify the body afterwards, no one really bothers to check.

The first one arrived on time, at 9.05 p.m. exactly.

The next at 9.07. There was a lull at 9.08 and then, as if an infrequent and much-denounced train had finally pulled up, at 9.11 they all started to tumble through the door of St Christopher’s Hall, with sideways glances as if to say, and you are who? Some smiled nervously and offered to shake hands–or whatever limb seemed suitable. Others kept their eyes on the floor, or clasped the shoulder of a more approachable companion come along to give support. One or two sneaked in under the mantle of their own very special disguises or glamours: there was the ever-reliable yellow fluorescent jacket that nearly guaranteed invisibility to all who wore it, through to a full-blown burka, rather let down by the hint of talon protruding beneath as the wearer folded herself uncomfortably into a plastic chair.

“Tea, coffee?” Sharon asked the gathering assembly as they shuffled their seats into place. A chorus of grunted affirmations came back, no one wanting to acknowledge that they were so difficult as to need tea or coffee but, that said, if someone else was having one anyway, they didn’t see the harm…

One or two braver guests tried talking to each other, stop-start conversations that fell into a lull as they gathered into a communal circle. Watching from the corner of her eye, by the time the door to the alley finished banging shut Sharon had counted fourteen individuals of various shapes and sizes.

Not a bad number, she decided as steam began spouting from the kettle. And considering how limited her biscuit budget was, it was probably for the best. Not that anyone was going for the biscuits, though many eyes were upon them. Sensing this might be just the incentive to socialise that everyone needed, she grabbed two from a paper plate and munched loudly.

A voice said, “I’ve got ginger nuts.”

Sharon looked round. A freckled face peeked from beneath spear-straight hair that his mother probably told him was rich auburn but which no one else could deny was carrot from its pudding-bowl line up to its thick roots. The accent was Welsh, tinged with an apology for same, the height was average with an inclination towards short, the frame needed an extra ration of chicken soup, and the clothes were pure nerd. From the ends of the battered leather jacket one size too large, black fading to green where time had done its damage, to the ends of his never-run-in running shoes; from the beige trousers that sagged around the middle to the unironed tartan-pattern shirt with its mismatched buttons, this was a man who understood that he should care about fashion, but couldn’t quite make fashion care back.

She must have stared, because he swallowed, Adam’s apple rising and falling hugely, and said, “I suppose some people might be allergic to ginger nuts? I’m sorry, I didn’t really know what kind of thing you were supposed to bring to this sort of meeting, see?” He tried a grin, dazzling as a squally shower on an overcast day. “I suppose next time I’ll bring some fruit salad.”

“What?”

“Fruit salad? Although some people don’t like pineapple, which I don’t understand because I really like pineapple but everyone is different aren’t they? I mean of course they are that’s why we’re here I suppose, even though actually,” a laugh designed to be rich found itself on hard times, “we’re not really!”

He pushed the packet of biscuits among the rest, and mumbled, “Would you like a hand with the tea?”

Sharon said, “Uh, thanks, I mean… yeah. That’d be great, cheers.”

“I’m Rhys,” the man explained brightly, occupying himself over the tea with the dedication of the truly relieved. “Rhys Ellis.” Then, in a lower, conspiratorial voice, “I’m a druid.”

“Really?” exclaimed Sharon, and now she too found that the mugs of tea were the most interesting things she’d ever handled. “That’s very uh… that’s very…”

“Welsh?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

“I learned druiding in Birmingham.”

“That’s less Welsh.”

“Yes, but my second teacher was from Swansea. Actually, my first was from Bangkok and he smoked these nasty cigarettes all the time. At first I thought they were some kind of herbal thing, see, to enhance his communing with the primal forces of the city, but in fact they were just cheap.” He laughed, so Sharon dutifully laughed as well. Before the laughter could end and words could muscle back in with disastrous consequence, she grabbed a handful of mugs and turned to the other people there.

“Tea!” she shrilled. “Who’d like a nice cuppa?”

“Before we begin,” said a voice, “I totally have a question?”

All eyes turned to the speaker. If he’d had the vascular capability, he might have blushed. Peroxide-blond hair on a bone-white face, skinny blue jeans, leather shoes and a tight-fitting white T-shirt all proclaimed the owner, a man of probably no more than twenty-five years old, to be comfortable with his sexuality, even if the rest of the world wasn’t. “So yeah, hi there. I’m just wondering, with this meeting–are we going to change the hours for daylight saving? Only my complexion really takes some looking after and I can’t be having too much sun, if you know what I mean.”

Silence in the hall.

Eyes turned inexorably to Sharon. She rose to her feet. This moment was something she’d been preparing for.

She said, “Uh…”

And stopped. Somehow, in all those hours spent in front of the mirror practising being open-minded and understanding, with help from books carrying titles like Everything I Ever Needed to Know Was Inside Me Already, the rallying cry of “Uh” hadn’t been mentioned.

“… these are issues,” she added hastily, because you couldn’t go wrong with a good “issue” or maybe even a “challenge”, “which we can all address. If anyone has any concerns about the set-up of this group then of course please do say so, and we’ll try to, like, address that.”

It had been going so well.

“Excuse me?” The voice wasn’t loud or aggressive or even particularly projected but there was something in it, an indefinable thickness of sound, that cut through every conversation. The speaker was hard to focus on. There was a sensation of bulk, aided by the fact that the speaker’s chair seemed to be warping under pressure. But as Sharon looked and tried to gain an exact sense of weight or height or skin, or even gender, such information seemed to slip just out of her grasp, like wet soap in a hot bath.

“Excuse me,” he, or maybe she, or perhaps–yes and without wanting to be judgemental–perhaps it said, “May I have another biscuit?”

Several gazes flickered back to Sharon. “What? I mean of course. The biscuits are here for everyone to enjoy. Please, help yourself.”

“Thank you,” he/she/it replied, rising with the majesty of a sunken submarine from beneath raging depths. All eyes watched it go to the bar. All eyes watched it pick up a biscuit with a grace and care that surely came from having fingertips larger than a lion’s paw, and all eyes watched it return to its chair, which groaned under the imposition. It ate and, for a moment, there was an impression of teeth in that not-quite-face, teeth indeed that no wishful thinking could deny.

“Well, I think that’s just the kind of thing we should talk about,” said a voice at last, and Sharon nearly shuddered with relief as she turned to the new speaker. This was a man, mid-fifties, with demarcated strands of mouse-grey hair combed across his spotted, massy skull. He wore a navy-blue suit and a red club tie, complemented by a thick leather belt done up several notches too tight. But his face… Somewhere the gods of grease and the gods of time had drawn up their battle lines, and as their wars had raged the mercenaries of wart and spot had joined the foray, fighting to a standstill entrenched in the bags beneath his eyes, under his wattled chin and all around the remnants of his frayed hairline. At the gaze of the others, he bristled, and with petulant pride he declared, “You don’t see me coming here in a chameleon spell, and a cheap one at that, do you? I may see the appeal of an occasional glamour, the odd protective enchantment, when in more refined social circles. But here, surely, we must by definition wear our true colours!”

“There won’t be nudity?” queried someone. This was a question which Sharon had been hoping to posit herself, and so dismiss before the evening could get out of hand.

“I don’t think we should rush into things…”

“How does this work then?” asked a third.

This time Sharon was ready. She coughed, pushed her chair back, stood up with arms folded in front of her, and said, “Uh, yes, so I guess, uh, I should explain.” She took a deep breath and launched, far too fast, into her prepared speech. “Thank you all for coming to this very first meeting of Magicals Anonymous. I’m pleased to see what a good response we got from the Facebook campaign and on Twitter and I’m sure as the weeks go by we can come to help each other and… and stuff. Here we aim to support and assist each other with all our… our…” the eyes of everyone in the room, so carefully avoided, were beginning to burn into her “… our issues and things, and as this is the first time we’ve met I guess we should say a bit about ourselves and why we’re here. So, yeah. My name’s Sharon…”

“Hello, Sharon,” sang out a cheerful voice, into a silence. “What?” asked the speaker. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to say?”

“… and I can walk through walls.”

His name was Kevin and he was saying,

“… so yeah I mean it’s like so totally uncool what’s happening with modern hygiene. I mean, chlamydia, gonorrhoea, hepatitis, herpes, HIV, and that’s just like the stuff they pick up at the routine screening! You know how hard it is to find decent, drinkable blood these days? Alcohol, drugs, fatty diets, not enough green leaf vegetables and I’m like hello?! I’m not even going to drink your good stuff so I don’t see how you’re planning on living if that’s the best your cardiovascular system can produce!”

Sharon leaned a little further forward. This was, she’d concluded after the first ten minutes, the safest look to go with. The act of resting elbows on knees forced her into a position that showed interest, while resting her chin on her hand provided good head support and stopped her mouth from dropping open.

“Anyway,” concluded Kevin, trying not to twiddle his bright blond hair, “I was having some issues with the, you know, the…” He made a whistling sound and with two fingers twiddling in front of his face somehow managed to indicate the place where fangs might be. “So I went to the doctor and she was all like ‘So you’ve got a syndrome’ and I was like ‘Are you fucking kidding me? I’m like the bane of the immortal fucking night or whatever what the fuck do you mean I’ve got a syndrome?’ and she was all like ‘Yeah but it’s a cool syndrome’ and I was like ‘Lady, don’t give me this it’s a cool syndrome stuff, because I’ve gotta tell you I’ve got some real issues with personal hygiene anyway and if you’re about to tell me that my body is now, like, out to get me, well I honestly can’t tell you what I’m gonna do.’ And she gave me this leaflet and was all like ‘It’s called Seah’s syndrome and you’ve probably had it for a while. So when you were living your blood group was O negative and now you’re dead’–and you know she said ‘dead’ which I thought was just so prejudiced–‘and now you’re dead your blood group is still O negative, so that’s like the only blood group you can drink.’ ”

“Is that a popular one?” asked Mrs Rafaat. She was resplendent in a bright orange sari, with greying hair and a collection of thin silver rings on the fingers of her left hand.

“Like fucking no!” moaned Kevin, throwing his hands up in the air. “Only like fucking eight per cent of the population or whatever! And turns out a lotta the guys got this, only it’s not cool to talk about it, which again I think is so like, so stupid? But if you’re AB positive or something like that well then you’re really okay because you can drink like anything but O negative and that’s all you can fucking have, and I don’t know if there’s like, any scientific reason to think this but I really think these O negative fuckers don’t live clean. I have to bring a questionnaire along now and everything. I mean, really, it’s like a fucking dis-as-ter.”

Silence as the room waited for a little of his indignation to clear. Then someone applauded, and the others joined in. Kevin shifted in his chair uncomfortably, flashing the lightly fanged grin of the rarely appreciated, not quite able to believe this moment would last.

“I’m sure we’d all like to thank Kevin for his uh… personal story,” Sharon recited, forcing a rictus smile.

“Thank you, Kevin!” intoned the room. It was curious, Sharon noted, how it only took two or three people to feel the urge to chant their greetings or their praise in harmony, and suddenly everyone else was joining in, just in case their neighbour felt the urge, and then their neighbour’s neighbour felt the urge and, before they knew it, they were being left out or worse being rude. It had almost become a compe