He gave me the look, said, ‘Your lucky day but I’ll be watching for you…’

As he started to pull away, I said, ‘I’ll miss you.’

It was that day I met Cassie. On the Walworth Road, I nipped into Marks and Spencers, got some groceries. Time back, Elvis Costello had a song called ‘Watching the Detectives’. I like to do that, see how a real asshole makes a living. I spotted the store’s plainclothes operator near the frozen meat. Which is a fairly apt metaphor… and… he was clocking somebody.

A woman in her thirties, pushing a trolley. Wearing jeans, sweatshirt, Reeboks… pink Reeboks and new. Lookin’ comfortable. She had the moves, like Mary Tyler Moore, the expression. Remember the opening sequence to that show? She picks up a steak, glances at it, near grimaces and chucks it back in the freezer. I loved that, wanted to marry her right then, I was eleven.

She looked like Sarah Miles… or how she used to. Remember, with Dirk Bogarde in The Servant… or Ryan’s Daughter. Before she went ape. It’s the closest the English get to Style. Class is something else, they figure they invented it. She had a loose long coat and you knew it had them big vacuum pockets, only one reason you wear that. But she was quick, I’ll give her that. The package went inside there about as fast as it gets. Not fast enough. A surge of electricity went through the store detective. Time to move. I walked up to her, said, ‘Put it back, you’ve been spotted.’

The shock on her face was mega. I kept going and the detective moved after me. Reached me as I got to the door, said, ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you did, I’d have had her bang to rights.’

He must have been all of twenty-five and, to judge by his eyes, all of them miserable. I asked, ‘Spoil yer day, did I?’

‘I’ll remember you, see if I don’t.’

‘Jeez, everybody’s saying that.’

Not sure how to proceed, he raised his voice: ‘Is that all you’ve to say for yerself?’