That house was astounding inside, open-plan, minimalist, and bleak. The living room, marble-floored and islanded with pieces of furniture shaped like bright-colored grubs or mollusks, was cut off diagonally by a gallery rail and its ceiling ended at the same point and angle. Above was soaring space that terminated as far as I could see in a turret of glass. It might have been warm up there in the turret, but it was very cold down here. I looked for candles, once Liv’s undisputed accessory, but couldn’t see any. Lamps were everywhere, standards that were glass funnels on steel stems apparently growing out of the floor, wall lights like champagne flutes and wall lights like Roman vases, and two great chandeliers, the modern sort that you see in international hotels (I don’t stay in them, I rewire them) that look like glaciers or frozen waterfalls. Mr. Clarkson must be doing very well for himself.

I wasn’t sure at that point whether to enlighten his wife or not. Perhaps “enlighten” isn’t the word, for by now I was sure she knew me just as I knew her. It might be better to do the job, whatever it was, and leave. Get down to Paddington Basin where I had a meeting at midday with the Clerk of Works. She didn’t look at me and I realized that she hadn’t looked at me after that first amazed stare.

“I don’t know if you can do it,” she said, and for the first time I heard the accent that was once so familiar, the sing-song rhythm of the Swede speaking English. Her English was perfect now, but she was nervous. “I mean, maybe I should have got the original electricians back. But they’ve disappeared, they’re not in the phone book. It’s the switches, they don’t work— well, they don’t do what they’re supposed to. I mean, there are supposed to be thirty-two ways of having the lights on in this room, but when you push those buttons you just get a lot of bright light.”

It wasn’t for me to ask who the hell would want thirty-two light-level variations. The rich are different. They have more money. So no doubt they want as much or as little light as they are prepared to pay for. As that went through my head, I also thought that the way I was going, it might not be too long before I was rich myself.