I’ve seen him twice since then, the first time to talk to. The second time was last year, a few days before I got married. Knowing me now, you won’t be surprised when I say I didn’t wear a wedding dress on the day, but nor did I intend to go to the altar in jeans and a pea coat. I was coming out of a shop in Sloane Street with the blue dress and jacket I had just bought in a golden carrier more grand than my outfit, when I saw him sitting at the wheel of a huge cream-colored Bentley parked round the corner in a side street. He was wearing a suit, a white shirt and a very sleek silver-gray tie, smoking a cigarette and dropping the ash out of the window. There’s a point in Sloane Street where the pavement gets very wide, facing the gardens of Sloane Square. I sat down on a wall and watched him. Did he see me? I don’t know. If he had I doubt if he’d have acknowledged me. If he thought about me at all, he was probably happily anticipating what I was going to witness in a moment.

I thought he was someone’s driver. That would account for his dropping his ash out of the window rather than sully the interior of the car. He lit another cigarette from the stub of the last. A woman of about twenty-five came out of the shoe shop on the corner, laden with shoe boxes in bags as smart as mine. She might have been a clone of Liv as she now was. Perhaps her hair was a brighter blond, her makeup heavier, her legs an inch or two longer. I knew Jonny wasn’t her employee when he didn’t get out to open the car door for her. She threw the bags into the back, got in beside him, kissed him on the cheek. She took the cigarette out of his mouth, drew on it and handed it back. I saw him make a playful swipe at her, not something I’d like him to do to me, playful or otherwise, put one hand to the wheel and move out into the traffic stream.

Another success story. Silver had forecast it or something very like it as we walked along the canal bank on our way to Torrington Gardens. Jonny was irrepressible, he said, nothing would get him down for long. He’d end up a rich man, a big-time crook.

“Won’t he get years and years in prison for what he’s done to Wim? It’s not the first time. Remember the Gilmore Hotel. And what about what he did to Liv’s dad?”