Pierce lived just off a Victorian garden square concealed behind Mile End Road – one of those hidden pockets of the East End that could be mistaken for Chelsea or Islington or my own Pimlico. For a nauseating moment I thought he might have the whole terraced house as his own, but there were two doorbells, with Pierce’s at the top. I rang, exchanged a couple of crackly words through the intercom, and heard feet on stairs.

I had seen Pierce’s picture in the newspaper profiles that had appeared before his seclusion: a round face under a shaved scalp, a combination that verged on the potatoey. But no potato had those eyes, dark and furious, always directed hard at the camera. No soulful chin-stroking or writerly gazing into space – arms crossed like a bouncer, staring you down. Only the photo on the back cover of Mile End Road differed: dark curly hair, retreating a little, glasses, the slightly affronted look of someone caught by surprise. Before he had settled his image. In Night Traffic, Pierce had speculated as to what had made him a target for muggers: he was five foot eight, a couple of inches shorter than me, and a little chunky. When he opened the door, though, he seemed at least my height and more; the slight doughiness of his frame manifested as pure presence and force. The eyes didn’t pin me down or fix on me like a laser or any of those clichés of command. It was as if he barely noticed me, catching my own gaze once, then breaking away, turning back into the hall.

‘Jack, yeah?’

‘Mr Pierce, great to meet you at last, I—’

‘Alan’s just left, surprised you didn’t see him.’

I was relieved. ‘Yes, I’m sorry I’m so late, I—’

‘Close the door, yeah? Just slam it.’ He was three steps up the stairs already, not looking back.

Pierce had the top two floors of the house – a flat more than twice the size of mine. At once I wondered if he owned or rented: the usual London question. Except that’s not the London question, not exactly. The question is: How are you here? How do you make it work? How do you supply what the city demands? More than half my salary went on the rent of my dark little flat and I dreaded the next increase. I was not making it work. How, then, did Pierce? The secret, shameful side of the London question was the accompanying desire to hear that the answerer was not making it work, that they were drowning in debt or crippled by mortgage payments or the flat had untreatable toxic mould or was the site of a recent and savage string of murders. Anything that would make one’s own failure sting a little less.