In the meantime, he worked hard and lived like a monk – if monks bought expensive clothes and ill-advised jewellery and ate in restaurants where the waiters glanced at them sideways and accepted vast tips with ill-concealed resentment. So, not much like a monk at all really, apart from the absence of women. Sex was easy enough to come by but relationships took time, and he had none to spare.

The night Albert got out. A flurry of activity, ending with the sudden departure of Vic. South America, said the grapevine. Bottom of the Thames, Harry countered. Harry always took the gloomy view, but Donald thought he was probably right. No-one held Vic’s attempt to take over the store against him, exactly – least of all Albert, who had come to power the same way. But business was business. South America was cheaper, but the Thames was a cast-iron investment.

It didn’t matter. Everyone was on the move and it was time for promotions. But first, a welcome-home party. His first and only time in Albert’s house. Albert had, of all things, a ballroom, and tonight it was filled with pounding music and people in their best clothes.

He told himself not to get excited. The chances were non-existent that Vic’s daughter would be there. She’d either be out of the country with her father, or else – he found he didn’t want to think about or else. Better to picture her somewhere hot and sultry, drinking piña coladas on a beach. Would she have asked why, or would she simply have packed a suitcase and followed Vic to the airport? He would probably never know the answer.

The word had gone around: leave the ladies at home. Plenty of girls, of course – some destined for the Blue Crocodile and the Red Door and the Filigree, others for the flats, expensively hired by the hour – but no wives or daughters. Nonetheless, he found himself disappointed not to see her.

He roamed the ballroom for three loud dull hours, drank himself half-sick with Harry as they celebrated their new positions. Sidney on the next patch had been moved upwards, and rather than bring in a new man, Albert had chosen to strategically lose most of Sidney’s workforce, and double Harry’s empire. More work for all of them, but also much, much more money. On balance, something worth celebrating. A brief drunken fumble with one of the Filigree girls, joyless and unsatisfying and over far too quickly. He thought about apologising for his poor performance, but what would be the point? He could see the relief in her eyes, could almost hear her thoughts, Wish they were all that quick about it. He found his coat and walked out into the sodium-lit night.

With enough drink inside him he could walk for miles. He had no map to follow and the street names were a drunken blur, but he walked and walked and walked, stopping only to pee against trees or in alleyways, letting his instincts guide him. The city unspooled before him in a long slow ribbon. Whenever he felt himself becoming sober enough to feel the ache in his legs and feet, he drank deeply from the flask in his coat pocket.