It was awhile before I found out about this conversation. While Silver and I climbed up the mansard onto the flat part of the roof I had no idea they were quarreling over me. I’d have been rather flattered if I’d known, but I didn’t know and I didn’t think about any of them for long. It was a fine calm night, the sky clear. An immensity of purple was spread out above us, unbroken by cloud or aircraft lights or streak of cirrus. Yet it was veiled by a hood of vapor dense enough to hide Venus and Mars and the Plough and the Seven Sisters, which I’d grown up with and become so used to that I only noticed them when they were gone.

We climbed down the gable at the end of the last terrace in Russia Road and onto the house that stood alone, then up the nailhead steps on the first gable of Torrington Gardens, and walked all the way to the terrace end. There, out of sight from any window, we dropped over the edge onto the balcony. The parapet with its bottle-shaped pillars was very low, less than three feet high, which made me think it was designed for show and not for anyone to walk out on. Besides, the dormers above it contained sash windows, not casement windows.

The plane trees in the pavement were very tall here, their leafy crowns reaching far beyond roof height. Anyone walking down the street might look up in this direction without seeing us. The street-lamps seemed very far below us, we were in the dark up here, but still we crouched down. We lay down and worked our way along, snake-fashion, Silver going first. It was dirty on that balcony with drifts of the dead plane leaves from autumns gone by and the accumulated dust of years. When we got up onto our knees, our hands were black and our clothes covered in sticky dirt as dark as soot.