In a jazz bar on the last night of 1937, watching a quartet because she couldn't afford to see the whole ensemble, there were certain things Katey Kontent knew:

• the location of every old church in Manhattan
• how to sneak into the cinema
• how to type eighty words a minute, five thousand an hour, and nine million a year
• and that if you can still lose yourself in a Dickens novel then everything is going to be fine.

By the end of the year she'd learned:

• how to live like a redhead
• and insist upon the very best;
• that riches can turn to rags in the trip of a heartbeat,
• chance encounters can be fated, and the word 'yes' can be a poison.

That's how quickly New York City comes about, like a weathervane, or the head of a cobra. Time tells which.