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The stallholder, who clearly recognised an easy mark when one presented itself, produced a second toothpick. “Castelvetrano. Sicilian. Completely different flavour profile.”

This one was bright green, buttery, mild enough to taste the flesh of the fruit itself rather than the brine. He ate it slowly, turning it over in his mouth, and when he looked up, Ruari was watching him.

“Good?” he asked.

“I could live on just these, and your pastries,” Cassian said, entirely serious, and Ruari laughed and steered him onward with a press of his palm against Cassian’s spine before the stallholder could sell him an entire kilogram of olives.

At the cheese stall near the bridge, the one with the tiny cubes on toothpicks, Cassian managed five samples before anyone noticed. Ruari stood beside him and just watched, arms crossed.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Ruari didn’t look away.

Cassian chewed slower, trying to work out what could possibly be that interesting about him eating cheese off a stick, and came up with nothing.

A woman selling honeycombs in glass jars let Cassian dip his spoon into a taster pot, and the honey was so intensely floral that he closed his eyes and stood still in the middle of the walkway while shoppers streamed around them.

“That’s Manuka,” the woman said. “From New Zealand.”

His eyes opened. Ruari was still there, still watching, his hand finding the small of Cassian’s back again as they moved on.

He kept it there through the vintage clothing stalls and the antique silver, past a man selling hand-bound notebooks that Cassian wanted badly but couldn’t justify: his writing wasn’t well behaved enough yet to deserve such nice paper. At the spice stall Cassian buried his nose in a jar of sumac and sneezed so hard that Ruari had to catch the jar before it hit the ground.

He had an alpha with him. A big one, who parted the crowd just by walking through it, and so handsome that a woman at the jewellery stall had tracked Ruari with her eyes as they’d passed. Cassian had watched the woman watching Ruari, and stepped in closer under Ruari’s arm.

The sun was out, and Ruari’s hand was on his back, so he ignored the buzzing of his mobile in his pocket.

They ate their way down Portobello Road like it was a competitive sport, and Ruari matched him bite for bite, easily. Fair enough: the man had at least five stone and a foot on Cassian. Presumably stomach capacity scaled accordingly.

Cassian had three slices of focaccia from the Italian bread stall, and Ruari ate five without even needing to burp.

“You’re a machine,” Cassian told him, wiping rosemary oil off his chin with the heel of his hand.

“I skipped breakfast.”

“You own a bakery. How can you skip breakfast with all the good things around you?”

Ruari shrugged. “Baker’s curse. You spend four hours making things, and by the time the case is full you never want to see another croissant.”

The stallholders all knew Ruari. A sourdough-pizza seller at the far end called him over by name and handed him a slice folded in half, trailing mozzarella, and wouldn’t take his money. A Turkish man running a dried-fruit-and-nut stall pressed a punnet of figs into his hands with a firm “For you, my friend, for you”, and Ruari tucked them under his arm and said he’d bring fresh bread round on Monday.

In the compound, belonging had been something the Lumineer bestowed and the Universe confirmed. Here, it manifested in getting figs for free since the generosity ran both ways, and easy smiles at Ruari, on account of the community deciding Ruari was theirs.

Ruari tore a fig in half and held one piece out. Cassian took it, and bit into flesh so sweet and jammy that he couldn’t resist popping the whole thing into his mouth.

“You like that?” Ruari asked, and Cassian nodded, mouth too full to stop chewing.

They came to a stall at the Westway end that Cassian would have walked straight past; from a distance it looked like a jumble of colour and fabric. Up close, it was piles of silk scarves in jewel tones, velvet hair bows the size of cabbages, straw hats dyed improbable shades of coral and turquoise, and clip-on earrings that glittered like boiled sweets.

Ruari stopped.

“Right,” he said, scanning the table. “I need your eye, Cass.”

“My eye for what?”

“Presents.” Ruari picked up a hair bow in electric pink and held it up. “My nieces. They’re four and six, and they’re both mad for this sort of thing, but I haven’t got a clue what’s good. Never had a need for bows myself.” Ruari scrubbed a palm over his short-cropped hair.

Cassian took the bow out of his hands, set it back on the table, and got to work.