W hen I first got to New York just over a decade ago, there was a party game that began with the question, “What is the nicest apartment you have ever been inside?” A group of friends used to play it together, telling stories of tenuous connections that got them, for a few moments, into a famous building on Park Avenue or a soaring penthouse downtown.

They were a ragtag group: artists, TV writers, journalists, lawyers. Over the years, as their careers took off, the stories got better.

I think of the party game now, standing in a lift as it rises with ear-popping speed up an impossibly thin skyscraper and stops halfway up, at the 43rd floor. It opens into the hallway of a home.

Registered in England No. 894646. Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, SE1 9GF.