Among the people he meets are Archie, a young Scottish man looking for his girlfriend Maggie on Brewer Street, and Brian, a security guard who looks after an empty office building at night, which Johnny calls 'the most tedious job in England', while planning to move to a seaside cottage in the future. He leaves and walks around central London, expounding his world view at length to anyone who will listen. Johnny seduces Sophie while treating Louise coldly, but soon tires of her. Louise works as a file clerk and lives with two flatmates, the unemployed Sophie, whom she calls her 'hippy-dippy friend', and the primary tenant Sandra, a nurse who is away in Zimbabwe. He seeks refuge at the home of Louise, a former girlfriend from Manchester, who is not happy to see him. When her family arrive and chase him away, he steals a car and flees to Dalston, a 'scrawny, unpretentious area' in east London. In a Manchester alley, Johnny Fletcher rapes a woman.
