The Fourth Year

I found it at twenty past eleven, in the fourth year, because it was the kind of number I am paid to find.

By then I had moved down to the estate office, because East Two had no table big enough for what I was doing and I had wanted a printer. The house was asleep round me, or pretending. The long table under the window was covered in paper I had printed and laid out year by year, left to right, the way I lay out any business I am trying to understand: income on top, costs under it, the bank below. I was wearing the navy jumper. The tower’s walls kept the day’s warmth for about two hours after dark and then gave it all back to the sea, and nobody was there to see me in it.

The estate made money. That was the first thing, and…