NIGHT WATCH

There’s an old office building in South London, where every business is out of the building by seven, and until six the next morning there’s no one there except one security guard, who spends much of his time drinking tea, and watching old episodes of Only Fools and Horses, Formula 1, and porn on his phone. Every so often, he has to go round and shine his torch along corridors and try doors and generally earn his living for a while.
One December night quite soon though will be his last night at work, and he’ll quit the next morning and take a job in a garden centre, which apart from the early morning and late afternoon is a daytime daylight day job.
That’s because on that night, he’ll be doing his 2am rounds in the dark and when he reaches the third floor he’ll notice light shining under one of the office doors. For just a moment’s break from the boredom rather than caring about the bills, he will find his master key and unlock the office door to turn the light off.
When he opens the door, he will stop one step in, and the four men who are round a table talking will stop for a moment. “Sorry,” one of them will say. “We’re just borrowing the room for a time. We’ll put it back when we’re finished,” and he will give a big reassuring smile.
The security guard will just nod and back out of the door and lock it again. He will go downstairs, post his keys back through the letterbox, and walk away from the building into the night because there had been no light for him to switch off in the upstairs office. It was well enough lit by the daylight streaming in through the windows.