A brilliant moon seemed to hang directly above us. Its clear greenish light showed us the world above that hardly anyone ever saw, the roof cluttered with antennas and dishes and tanks and cowled pipes, the chimney stacks here narrow columns, each bearing only two pots. The towers of Westminster’s estates on the canal to the west, which seemed so tall at ground level were from here reduced to mere apartment blocks. The moonlight painted their pagoda roofs the silvery white of frost. For some reason the canal remained black, its water so calm it scarcely glittered. Browning’s island lay dark-treed and peaceful on the wide stretch above Paddington Basin.

Liv and Jonny went off together, she with a bad grace but accepting the inevitable once Wim had disappeared into the distance and she had no hope of keeping pace with him. He dressed in black at night, we all wore dark colors up on the roofs, but that evening, in the bright radiance, paler colors might have been a wiser choice. Any observant passerby, looking upward, might have seen us. But few people are observant, they seldom look roofward and, in any case, the streets were deserted. Fear emptied them, though I never found out what exactly people were afraid of. Muggers? Men like Jonny? From up there you could always see a hundred television screens, glowing moonlight-white through uncurtained windows in every row and terrace.

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?”