The clearing on this side has already started so I was able to walk quite a long way down, under the Westway exit and past the point where the underpass comes out. On the other side, on the towpath between the boats and the gardens, was where, twelve years ago, I first saw Wim. He was talking to a man on one of the boats, though who he was I never found out, and the two of them were gazing upward at the sky and the traffic roaring along the great curved concrete flyover. It was cold that day. The boats were covered in tarpaulins like horses in coats, the flowers had been nipped and browned by the first frosts, and an icy mist hung over the motionless dull green water. I didn’t know it was Wim then, I didn’t know who he was or where he lived, only that his face was one of the strangest and most beautiful I’d ever seen, away from the cinema or TV screen.

The Clerk of Works is already in residence down there, in a temporary building too grand to be called a hut. He didn’t react to my turning out to be a woman, he expected that, we’d talked on the phone. We studied the architect’s plans together and went on a tour of the cleared area, trying to form some sort of idea in our minds as to how it would look when rows of tall houses faced each other across the wide lake the Basin becomes at this point. It was after two by then. He was pleased as men are when I did as I always do in this situation and produced from my toolbag a rather carefully thought-out lunch for two. Smoked salmon sandwiches this time, pâté and cheese and Bath Olivers and strawberry tarts I’d stopped off on my way and bought from Raoul’s. A man wouldn’t think of doing that, but when I do it, even if he tends to be sexist, he’ll think that there may be more to having a woman electrician on the job than first meets the eye. You see, I can’t afford to neglect any move that might improve my career chances or enhance my reputation.