She sits up and reaches down to the floor for the remnants of last night’s bottle. Whisky?

Fuck it, go on then. He holds out his cup of tea and Jeanie pours it in.

He showers quickly and dresses.

Jeanie is now on the sofa in her dressing gown, cowering over a Bodum of coffee, a tower of ash on the cigarette in her fingers.

He takes one of her straights from the duty-free pack on the table, the warning in Turkish.

He stands looking at her for a moment. Are you going in to work?

She moves as if startled and the ash falls onto her hand. She’s developed a bit of a head tremor lately. He wonders whether she knows, or whether to tell her. She touches her face, smearing it with ash. I’ll go in later. I don’t do my best work in the office.

Ollie checks his pockets. I should probably go in. Don’t wanna get the sack. Not in winter.

Jeanie shrugs.

He takes an apple from the fruit bowl. It is mouldy. He puts it back and wipes his hand on his jeans. He picks up his camera, checks his pockets again. I’ll see you later then?

Another shrug.

He lets himself out.

Finissage: Gentrification is nigh

Ollie knocks off work early and heads to the Whitechapel Library for the central heating, cheap snacks and comfortable chairs, the pleasantly bolshy staff, and the sense that all human life (except the artworld) is there. In Local History he lies down on a beanbag for a minute with his hands over his eyes, until a hijabi schoolgirl asks if she can get past.

He runs into Max Levitas in the upstairs café and gets him a cup of tea. Tell me about the whole thing all over again, Max, says Ollie, and the Cable Street veteran obliges.

Join the Young Communists, young man! shouts Max as Ollie leaves him.

I will do, Max, I will do, says Ollie.

It’s the only way to defeat the fascists.

*

On the corner where Sweet and Spicy used to be, a Bengali working girl stands and smokes. The owner of the new restaurant bangs on the window to shoo her off. She bangs back and stays put. On the other side of the corner Jeanie is waiting for him, denim-jacketed, leaning with one foot planted against the wall like some kind of pastiche of a rent boy. She has taken to chewing bubblegum. She looks utterly ridiculous. She pushes away from the wall as she sees him, and they fall into step.

Ollie shows her the email on his phone. Didn’t get in, he says.

She takes it and reads, blowing a pink bubble, letting it pop and chewing again. That’s brutal. She laughs and hands it back. What are you going to do?

Self-medicate.

Don’t start without me.