I didn’t see it at first. There are two cities in Edinburgh. There is one above ground and one below, one in the center and another on the outskirts. The one in the center seems to be able to do anything it wants and the one on the outskirts can only take whatever is dealt out to it; it all seems so damn familiar. There is the Edinburgh that is presented to tourists. Then the other one, which is considered to be the real Edinburgh, to the people who live here. There are the fancy hotels and shops and motorcars and trams and places of work, then there are the slums, starvation, disease, addiction, prostitution, crime, little or no infrastructure, no plumbing, no clean water, no rights… if the council want to go and take their homes down, they do. This is all on streets just ten minutes’ walk from the fancy city center. When will these things change? Everywhere? When? All fur coat and nae knickers. That’s a phrase the postman told me. It embodies this city. They keep children without families in a home on the other side of town and they train girls up as maids and sell them into the households of the wealthy. Boys get trained to sweep chimneys and then they get sold too. I had no idea! The area where the sisters died in the fire is notorious for early death rates – although not often from something as horrific as that.

I thought my day couldn’t get any more awful, then my neighbor Greig in the flat below begins shouting – his wife has turned up! We didn’t know he had one. She accuses him of living with a girlfriend there, which of course he has done for a long while. But none of us knew he had another home with a wife and kids that he lives in half the time. The wife then tries to stab the girlfriend with a fork! Police come out. They take the wife and girlfriend away. A reporter got a hold of the story from an ambulance attendant who was paid a few quid. Mr Udnam has a fit! He thinks the police are there for him! He stands at the door shouting that he helps the poor! That they are not getting into his building. He reels off every important person he knows – he is frantic! I’ve never seen a face so lined with guilt. I stayed watching from my window in the tenement as it all unfolded.

Then the police just leave.

Greig packs his things, hands Mr Udnam his keys, says he won’t be back in this fucking city again. I don’t think he will be either. He walks off shouting about Indonesia and sending for Flora.