Somewhere near here, before the expansion of the city when this was all parkland and pasture owned by Littles, Liddells and Howards, there had been a smithy. Three or four men working the forge, and a cottage next door where the smith lived with three children and a dark haired wife. The clown would see the woman staring from the window as he passed, feeling her eyes on his skin. One time, she was waiting for him and walked with him, telling him things he shouldn’t have known, and he felt her desire. A week or so later, she was there again. Her face flushed, her shoulders rising and falling as she breathed. He did not know how long she had been looking out for him by the road, as it was already evening and the light failing. She pulled him into the shadows, grabbing his hair and kissing him so violently that his lips hurt. He felt nothing, neither pity nor desire, and pulled away, wiping his mouth. Her head dropped and she didn’t speak. He thought of the smith and the children he’d seen many times playing in front of the house. Whatever it was the woman needed, he couldn’t give. Holding her by the shoulders, he whispered in her ear something that only she heard. A few days later, the smith himself confronted him on the street, companions at either shoulder, one carrying an iron bar. The man accused the clown of everything he had not done but had been invited to do. The smith had seen the way his wife looked at the clown, the way her face flushed when his mane was spoken. A crack of metal, the smith’s fists pounding at his chest, oaths and spittle from the thugs accompanying him. He played dead, more for the sake of the smith who seemed a good man, and it’s not as if he didn’t need punishing. Within a year, the woman was cradling another child, her hair as curly and red as her father’s. The smithy has long since been swallowed by a block that runs between Quex Road and Kingsgate Place; two shops selling and reconditioning laptops and games consoles; a mobile phone outlet, a cheap jewellery store and a discount clothing chain. On the first floor are a number of import-export, accountants and conveyancers’, not that anyone looks up. Who knows what you might tread in?