The building opposite was a glass curtain wall. Around ten in the morning the reflection put an oval of light on his living room wall, about the size of a hand.
In summer it sat low, near the skirting. In winter it climbed to a metre and a half. Once a year, up and back down.
He was a surveyor and could not help himself. On the first of every month, ten o'clock, he put a pencil dot at the centre of the patch and wrote the month beside it.
Three years, thirty-six dots. Joined up they made a long thin figure-of-eight, two loops crossing in the middle. He knew what it was — the sun traces that shape over a year — and he was rather pleased with it.
On the first of January in the fourth year, the patch did not move.
It was in the same place on the first of February. March. April.
He went over to ask the management company. They pulled the records: that facade had been replaced three years ago after complaints about glare. He went and looked. Solid pale grey render, not a pane of glass in it.
He came home and looked at the wall.
The crossing point of the figure-of-eight sat at one metre ten.
That is where the head of his bed is. The bed was not there when he moved in. He shifted it into that corner in his second year.