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hotels, private apartments and gentlemen’s clubs. It was a London still confident of its own elegance, deluded by its sense of importance in a post-war world. Clear sky, full moon, dead king, princess pining in the palace, this woman by his side. Feeling it more appropriate in the cold to take her hand than not to, yet still managing to keep apart. The formality of space. Very Japanese . At Grosvenor Square, he had expected the American Embassy to dominate, to be lit up grand like a southern plantation mansion with Uncle Sam rocking back easy on the porch. But the chancery was just the same as the other embassies dotted around Mayfair, hidden away behind the broad doors, brass plates and flagpoles of a block of terraced Georgian houses.
    In silence they wandered into the large open square in front of the embassy. A barren space with just a few trees, the scattered survivors of wartime bombings. She directed him towards a statue, standing pale in the moonlight. “Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882 – 1945”. Dressed in his cape, propped up by his cane. Then suddenly, from a corner of this quiet plot of parkland, a figure came hurtling towards them along one of the pathways, surprising them, gliding, too fast, too smooth, to be running. A young man on roller skates.His torso arched in a forward prow, hands clasped behind his back, scarf trailing in his slipstream, he slid past them and around the statue. Expressionless, the skater executed one loop of the plinth, then another and another, wheels grinding rough on the concrete, passing them each time, performing this private dance for them, wreathing them in some fantastic web before breaking away and disappearing back along the path.
    ‘You can leave me here,’ she said, her voice breaking the spell.
    ‘Oh. I thought I’d see you to your flat.’
    ‘Here’s fine,’ she said. She fumbled in her coat pocket. Found him a flyer, pressed it into his hand, her fingers red from the fry. ‘It’s my exhibition. Try to come.’
    He pulled his coat in tighter. Rocked back and forward on his heels. Noticed her lips greasy and flecked with salt. Two beers and the skater making him feel he might be brave enough to try a kiss.
    ‘I had a nice time, Eddie,’ she said, stepping back and away from him. ‘Don’t spoil it.’

CHAPTER FIVE

    Japan
•
2003
    Edward had arranged a wake-up call with the front desk but it had proved unnecessary. He awoke well before the dawn, remarkably clear-headed for only four hours sleep. As his life became shorter, he slept less and less, until he wondered if there would come a time when he would not require any sleep at all. The achievement of a perpetual state of awakeness, of constant awareness, before the reward of permanent sleep.
    A quick shower before sitting down in his robe at the writing desk. He ran his fingers over the mahogany, letting his palms be lightly scored by the corners and edges. The rectangular, olive-leather inlay had been replaced and the space for the inkwell was now sealed off with a circle of wood that just failed to match the original. But he was sure it was the same desk. He turned on the reading lamp, opened up the notebook he had bought for the trip, began to write. No longer fiction, for what stories had he left to tell? But poetry. Just like he used to write in the early London days. Except then he wrote about youth, about love, about hope. Now he wrote about nature. About death and birth. Poetry had become his literary garden of retirement where he pottered about in hiswithered skin, pruning that branch, choosing to pick that flower, hacking out that stubborn weed. Writing
haiku
.
    He paused from his scribblings to watch the day break over the hillside, the sunlight rising to glint on the grey tiles of the hotel’s outbuildings, to melt on the dewy branches of the poplar trees. Lights flickered on in the kitchens, steam churned out of the fired-up boilers, giant extractor fans started to whirr. The crisp, oily