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 the first chapter of a Dickens novel then everything is probably going to be fine.

By the end of the year she'd learned:

- How to launch a paper airplane high over Park Avenue

- How to live like a redhead

- How to insist upon the very best

- That the word 'yes' can be a poison

- and the Rules of Civility.

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