The street and suburb wanted it dead. They saw it as a malignancy made of psychosis and dependency that would kill them all unless it was killed first. And indeed the street was dying, empty shop after empty shop, their windows plastered with bills and streaks of sputum run dry. And everyone knew it was this place killing the street. That was accepted. We either excise this damned tumour right now or we all die.

Every dud restaurateur and clueless shopkeeper could explain their failure by saying it was the Gatwick that did them in. Even my peerless dumplings couldn’t pull a paying clientele with that seething Bedlam tossing cadavers out the high windows onto tourists. It became the default exculpatory claim after every commercial misadventure … the plan was good, but the sisters killed it off.