Jonny was making for the mansion block that was the last in Peterborough Avenue, five stories in red and white dressings with wrought-iron railings on all but the top one. These balconies made access to the flats easy and most of the occupants had put bars on their windows. But the top-floor windows weren’t barred, Silver told me. From where he and I sat on the parapet we could see the copper domes of the mansions and the cupola with its tower of the winds that grew grandiosely from the center front of its roof.

I suppose I was naive if not innocent, but it wasn’t until then that I realized what Jonny was doing.

“He’s quite rich, you know,” Silver said, “and all of it from dealing and stealing.”

The dealing didn’t much surprise me. Silver’s place was often redolent of cannabis and I’d seen Jonny and Liv do a line of cocaine. But stealing?

“I told you people who live in top flats leave their windows open. Especially in summer. He’ll go in through an open window. He won’t take her. Not because he doesn’t want to involve her; she’d be too much of a risk.”

“Don’t you mind?”

Silver put his arm around me and we sat with our legs dangling no more than an inch or two above the lintel of the windows below. “Shall I sling him out?”

“I don’t know. It’s your place.” I sought for an answer. “Are you trying to make him better? Are you trying to—well, redeem him?”

Silver laughed. His laughter rang around that bare moonlit rooftop. The people in the top flat just below us must have heard him. Perhaps they thought it was an angel laughing or, more likely, sound from next-door’s television. “I’m not a redeemer, Clo. I suppose I like him. I’ve never met anyone else who does.”

“He doesn’t pay you rent?”

“No one pays me rent. I tell myself I’m not—well, harboring him, giving shelter to a thief, I mean. He’s got a room of his own in Cricklewood.”

But he has access to the roofs because he lives in your place. I didn’t say this aloud. I didn’t have to.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Silver said.

“You always do.”

“I’ve been into one or two flats myself. From the roofs, I mean. I couldn’t resist it, just to look.”

“But you didn’t steal anything.”

“No. It was curiosity. Like your Mabel. Come on, let’s go on.”