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dust fuzzed every surface like thriving bacteria.
    Tilda loved it at first sight. Her heart was set on it. She took my hand and led me around, excitedly decreeing her studio would be in the front room where teller drawers still lined one wall. ‘My own studio. My own, very own studio all to myself.’
    ‘Not so loud,’ I advised her. The estate agent was behind us up the hall. ‘He’ll think he’s got two live ones here and be able to hold the line on price.’
    She looked at me with one eye arched to mean What do you know about buying property?
    I whispered, ‘I have learned a thing or two from watching my father.’
    That got rid of her arch. I could hear Norm’s voice in my ear. I could see him give me a wink and a nod: ‘You’ve got to screw ’em down, Colin. Smile but never give an inch.’ I hooked my thumb in my belt in Norm’s manner and winked at Tilda: ‘Make out you’re not interested.’
    The agent stood in the door frame and bent over to hitch his cream walk-socks tighter under his knob-knees. ‘So, what do you do ?’ he asked me. He had a plump grey moustache tarnished by nicotine. It curled into his mouth when he breathed.
    ‘Do?’ My hooked thumb and Norm manner must have fooled him that I was a man of means. ‘I plan ,’ I said with an airy sweep of the hand.
    ‘What, an engineer or something?’
    I didn’t answer. I turned to Tilda. ‘This place needs work. Lots of work.’
    The agent kept on with his questions. ‘And the lady, does she do anything?’
    ‘I’m an artist.’
    There was a chesty guffaw from the man. The hairs in his mouth blew out and got sucked back in. ‘Artist. Bullshit artist?’ He reprimanded himself for laughing, waved his hand to make his laughing go away. ‘I shouldn’t make jokes like that, should I? Couldn’t resist it. Artist. Bullshit artist. No, I shouldn’t say that sort of thing. Love a joke, though, don’t you? If you can’t have a laugh, what’s left in life?’
    ‘Her name is Tilda Robson,’ I said with a toff-vowelled flick of my fringe. ‘She is an artist. Not a bullshit artist.’
    ‘Shit, I mean, goodness, is she famous then, the lady? Are you a famous artist, lady?’
    She was measuring out the room in her mind, dreaming about her studio. I answered for her, ‘She is highly respected.’
    The agent put his hands in his pockets. ‘So, you interested in the place?’
    ‘Like most things, Mr…I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’
    ‘Clinch. Ken Clinch.’
    ‘Like most things, it comes down to price. What’s the best you can do?’
    A Norm favourite after that question was to shake his head even before the answer, and say, ‘Actually, come to think of it, I might pass on this one today.’
    I nodded to Tilda that I knew what I was doing. I did not look Clinch in the eye. All part of the next Norm stage: ‘I tell you what. What’s the asking price again?’
    ‘Forty-two and a half.’
    I gave a grunt and a headshake and launched in to the ambit-claim phase. ‘Tell you what—thirty-two and a half. Tell your client take it or leave it.’
    ‘I reckon they’ll take it,’ Clinch said, extending his hand to shake on the deal.
    ‘They will?’
    ‘Bloody oath.’
    ‘Oh. It’s…it’s Tilda’s money, so I better check with her.’
    There was no need for checking. She was suppressing squeals and leaps. She was joyful and proud: her perfect life now had a home.

Chapter 25
    And she was proud of me. If I had to list my finest moments—there have not been many—I would select that day, however sham was my businessman’s bluff. Clinch probably shouted the bar that night: ‘Thirty-two and a half. Vendor can’t believe his fucking luck.’
    Tilda and I congressed for the first time in three days, parked on a gravel stretch south of Scintilla cemetery. She dubbed me Rockefeller: ‘You’ve been hiding your light under a bushel.’ I was carried away enough to believe it and advise her that she could make a decent dollar