LATELY I’VE BEEN haggling over money with Terry. I tell him that I’m quite prepared to give him one payment per week instead of spreading my money over four or five nights. He shakes his head when I offer him the deal. ‘I don’t know, Louis,’ he says. ‘I’d like to think about it.’

Terry is a beggar, and has been for some years. He has staked a claim a few metres from my apartment, strategically placed between the liquor shop and the junction of streets and roads that gives Kings Cross its name. He is not the only beggar in the area.