The prologue opens with Richard Mayhew’s going away party. He’s leaving Scotland and heading to London. His friends pool their money to gift him an umbrella with a map of the London Underground on it. He takes a break from the party and sits out on the street, but thanks to his rumpled appearance, a passerby thinks he is homeless.

The passerby—an elderly woman who tells him she was once a dancer and was, at one time, homeless herself—offers to read his fortune. After examining his palm, she tells him he has a long way to go, and then she says, “It starts with doors” (14). She leaves, but he pursues her and gives her the umbrella with the map on it.

Richard’s friends summon him back to the pub, and he drinks with them for the rest of the night. The next day he goes to London on the train.

An unnamed woman is four days into running for her life. She is “more tired than a body could stand” (16) and she finds what she hopes is a safe place to sleep.

Meanwhile, two men, Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, are discussing Mr. Ross. They have hired to act as their metaphorical canary, in the same way a canary was traditionally sent into a mine shaft ahead of workers to determine if dangerous gases had leeched into the air below ground.