The thought broke through the drunkenness and he stopped sniggering. The call to the Lloyds underwriter had been a gesture of desperation, the thing he’d tried to avoid after what had happened with Clarissa in America. Unavailable, the secretary had said. Bit different from his wife. The booze washed through him, flooding the reflection. Charlie resumed his stilted progress, left right, left right, guiding himself by the kerb rim when there weren’t any paving stones, turning westwards at the far side of the bridge and retracing his path through the streets until he got to the tower block in which he hid, an ant among other ants. There were two bicycles fixed to the stair railings by a security chain and beneath the stairwell an abandoned pushchair, robbed of its wheels and squatting on its axle like the mother ant. There was a sour odour of dust and cabbage and paraffin. Someone had written ‘It’s me against the world’ with an aerosol can across the far wall.

‘Hope you win,’ muttered Charlie. He hadn’t.

The lift was broken, which was usual, so he stumped up the stairs, pausing at each floor, breath wheezing from him. His legs ached with the effort and, by the time he reached the fourteenth storey, he felt ill and sick. He reached out, supporting himself against the wall. It was several minutes before he could go through the linking door into his corridor. He stumbled on to the doorway, initially missing the lock with his key. Eventually inside, he slumped down, without taking off the plastic raincoat which hadn’t been necessary anyway, because the forecast had been wrong and it hadn’t even drizzled.

‘Buggered,’ he told himself. ‘You’re completely buggered, Charlie.’

It hadn’t been so difficult, when he’d first gone on the run. Often climbed the stairs then, to check if anyone was following, ducking in and out of landings, ears strained for the sound of pursuit. He’d done other things too in the surveillance detection manual. Like leaving miniscule fabric placings around the door to detect entry, and examining the lock for minute scratches, and arranging books and shirts and pocket flaps in certain ways, so he would know if there’d been a search. And always leaving the window open to the fire escape, for immediate flight.