This wasn’t taken in the spirit she’d intended. ‘You’re right, I know,’ he said, ‘it’s ordinary. I’d like another go at it, to tell the truth, but you can mind it for me till I’m ready to set eyes on it again.’ He spoke with the same pleasant drawl as all the locals she’d heard chatting on the trams, in greengrocers’ and tea shops and outdoor markets – that long-vowelled, soft-edged Liverpudlian that seemed to her a blend of Welsh and Irish. ‘If I need it back, I’ll find you before Structural Mechanics.’

In her head, she was reviewing her timetable. ‘That’s on Thursday.’

‘Well, let’s hope your magic will rub off on it by then.’ He tapped the table, saying, ‘I appreciate it. Thank you,’ and then headed for the door.

‘Just a minute,’ she said, causing him to turn and catch her eye. ‘I was wondering … What exactly was it you were looking at out there, before?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He blinked, a little coldly.

‘Earlier. I saw you staring up towards the roof. Just after eight. On Bedford Street. You had your head like this –’ She mimed it for him, doing an impression of the way he smoked. Eventually, he smiled, displaying a row of teeth as neat as they were yellow.

‘Oh, right, that was me,’ he said. ‘Those windows on the corner are bricked up. I suppose there has to be a reason for it, engineering-wise, but I quite like the way it looks. There’s something, I don’t know, poetic about how they’ve left it. Finished but unfinished.’

She hadn’t noticed it, and told him so.

‘You will now, every time.’ He eyed the door. ‘Well, cheerio, Miss Greaves.’

‘It’s Florence.’

‘Arthur,’ he said, pointing at his chin.

‘I know.’

‘Ta-ra, then.’

She left it half an hour or so, hovering in the corridors downstairs, lurking in the common room, before she went outside to see this touch of poetry that he’d been so enthralled by. He was right – as she’d suspected he’d be right – about the fenestration. There were ghosts of windows on the west side of the building, all three storeys walled off with the same red brick, and they were strangely beautiful.

After that, she saw him several times a week. In studio, they carried on with their designs for Mr Lundy and absorbed the principles of composition. In History and Theory lectures, she sat and gazed at Arthur’s head among the others in the rows before her. He was lively in Construction classes on a Tuesday, asking their instructor, Mr Flynn, a raft of questions about concrete and its applications. She could tell that he respected working architects like Lundy but was less inspired by academic types (McKenna, Flynn and Dawson), who seemed to preach more than they practised.

In Sciagraphy – her favourite class – they sat a fair distance apart. But, one afternoon, the group was told to put their pencils down and gather round her table for a sudden crit. Old Dawson said, ‘Could someone please inform Miss Greaves what’s wrong with her approach so far?’ The others squinted at the drawing she’d produced. It was supposed to represent a flight of stone steps in a concourse, sinking to a basement somewhere off the page. She was proud of how she’d shaded it and thought it looked authentic. Her fellow students muttered to each other, speculating on its flaws; one of them put up his hand and claimed the lower shadows didn’t correspond to the same vanishing point as the rest. Dawson shook his head: ‘No. Anybody else?’ At this, Arthur raised an arm. ‘Go on, Mayhood, out with it.’