By then, he’d lost his sense of bitterness about his situation. There were certain privileges he’d won from his first stripe: more recreation time, no limits on his conversation in the dining hall, a later call to bed. And there’d been hobby-hour classes, taught by volunteers from the outside. He’d taken woodworking, then draughtsmanship: a simple ten-week course that had awoken him to architecture. While it wasn’t true to say that he was ever satisfied with being a prisoner, borstal had allowed him to discover things he hadn’t known existed, skills he’d never thought that he possessed.

The strangest part about tonight was seeing those Taliesin boys engaged in work no different from the navvy gang’s routine. Heaving wet cement around in barrows, laying bricks, affixing joists and roof beams. In the navvy gang, they’d had no famous architect to guide them, just Ken Siddle, a retired engineer who’d given up his weekdays to inspire their love of building, showing up each morning in the same blue overalls and a cloth cap. They’d put up a machine shed, starting with shovels to dig out foundation trenches, ending with door locks and hinges – it wasn’t much to look at, but it had a pitched slate roof and windows edged with stone, and it was still the only finished building he could put his name to.

Now that he was brooding on it in the glumness of his room, he couldn’t stop the film from flashing in his mind again, the tick-tick-tick of it. There was nobody he could explain it to who would’ve understood. But there was Florence, who would listen.

It was much too late to call her. Even so, he went out to the hall to use the telephone, adding his name quickly to the logbook – he’d accrued a small debt to his landlord in the past few months, entirely with calls to Ockham. She picked up after half a dozen rings. ‘Yes? Hello? Who is this? Do you realize the time?’

‘Sorry, Flo. It’s me.’

A long breath of forbearance. ‘Goodness, Arthur. What’s so urgent?’

‘Only just got home …’

‘Have you been drinking?’

‘Might’ve had a few after the lecture. With a colleague.’

‘Well, you ought to get some sleep if you still plan to catch the eight fifteen.’

‘I’m not so sure I can.’

‘Oh, please don’t cry off now. It’s been a dreadful week. I need you.’

‘I’m still coming. I just meant that I can’t sleep.’

‘Why not?’

A blade of light appeared beneath his neighbour’s door. He had to lower his voice. ‘I wish you could’ve seen this film I saw tonight, Flo.’

‘You were at the flicks without me?’

‘Sort of.’ None of it could wait until tomorrow. By the morning, all the surfacing ideas that buoyed him now would surely sink again, or he would have to drown them. But if Florence heard the wonder in his voice, she would remember and remind him.