A grey wet wind screamed up the estuary and into the city centre, rocked trolley buses and swept old cabbage leaves along the cobbled docksides. Dirty barges shifted surlily on the greasy swell. Windows of workmen’s cafés were blank with inside steam. Raindrops flicked spitefully into the faces of the Saturday afternoon shoppers. Icy neon exaggerated the chilly faces of the shuffling crowds in the teatime indigo. But where I was, behind the double-glazing, twelve storeys up, it was warm and cozy and nice. I stood in front of the plate glass and looked down at the crowds and thought how nice it was to be twelve storeys up, in the warm, out of the wet. I turned away from the window and walked over to my beautifully plain, beautifully Swedish desk and took a cigarette out of the rosewood box and lit it with the table lighter. I smiled as I clicked the mechanism; the trick was that down one side it was wooden, carved in the shape of a woman, except for the tits, they were in silver and you pressed them to operate the lighter and the flame would spurt out from between the figure’s legs.
