The big wheel appears to be laden with businessmen. Whenever a carriage is lifted above the hundred-yard races of traffic outside the hotel, the passengers seem to turn their grey twilit faces to me. Are they seeing something behind me, beyond the roof, and telling their mobiles about it? Car drivers are using mobiles too, and commuters on the elongated trams that skirt the square, and pedestrians and loiterers around me on the pavement, so that I could imagine I'm surrounded by a solitary communication. Quite a few are gazing silently at their phone screens, and at least one man is grinning at his. I'm distracted from all this by a car that prowls along the kerb. It's a shabby Ford saloon the colour of rust, with a dent in the front passenger door. It spews fumes like a magnified negative image of the breaths that hover beside all the mobiles. The driver's large pale face ducks towards me as the car judders to a halt, and then he leans across the passenger seat to roll the window down.
