Andrew shouted out. He spun around, making hopeless grabs for the money as it flew. The wind was too high for him to stand a chance. I saw a purple note, a £20 note, brilliant in the searchlight, fly airily and come to rest in tree branches. But I didn’t stay to see any more. I climbed over the parapet myself, put one foot on the curved top of the nearest architrave, let the other drop onto the window ledge. I turned, my back to the facade now, spreadeagling myself against the broken blackened window. Silver was edging along what remained of the balcony to where Alison seemed to be sliding toward the brink. Repeatedly, he shouted at her to hold on. She took no notice. She was lying on her back, her hands beside her, palms upward, her legs dangling over the chasm.

Utterly silent, she was staring up at the glowing gray sky, across which the wind drove paler clouds scurrying. Crawling on all-fours now, Silver reached her. He squatted and stretched out his hands to take hold of her under her armpits. She might have been saved. Silver and I between us could have lifted her over the parapet and back onto the leads. I was watching and I’m sure I saw her edge a fraction away from him. I’ve never told anyone but Silver but that is what I saw. She turned her hands over, put them palms downward on the balcony floor and pushed herself, the way when on a slide beside a swimming pool you give yourself a small shove to start the downward progress. I shall always believe her action was purposeful. She wanted to die. Her love for Andrew and his for her were over, and Jason would now, inevitably, be taken away from her. She had tried to find herself a child, she had tried too many times, and it was all for nothing. Now to put an end to it. She lay staring at the sky as if she was praying to it or making some final despairing statement. Then she moved her hands, placed them on the stone floor beneath her and slid forward. With sudden swifter momentum she slipped over the edge, still silent, giving herself to the force of gravity. A swirl of banknotes accompanied her, dancing around her falling body, drifting down.

Silver had fallen on his knees. He knelt there, quite still, his eyes shut. Down in the street an ambulance had come, a fire engine had come. The men were bringing out ladders. I said, “Stay where you are. Wait.”

He gave no sign of having heard. “They’ll get you down,” I said.

He opened his eyes then and looked at me. “This thing is rocking like a boat on the sea.” A ship in a bottle? “I’ve got to get off it.” Then he said, “Is she dead? She must be.”