Then, in 1986, when Josh was an eighteen-month-old bundle of trouble, all things changed and Dan had to alter his thinking about being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was the year of the Big Bang, the deregulation of the stock market, and the staid, formal image of the City took on a new and welcome vibrancy. Dan’s firm benefited immediately, being one of the first to be taken over by a large American financial conglomerate, and within three months, he had been plucked from relative obscurity by the company’s new senior vice president to be one of their market makers. And from the moment that he started, he thrived on it. His battling days at school had fitted him well for the job. He loved the quick decision, the adrenaline rush of making a deal, the subterfuge in offloading a nonperformer. But above all, he loved making money.

It was probably a much-needed energy release on Dan’s part that resulted in Jackie’s giving birth to Millie and Nina within the space of the next two years. The flat in Baron’s Court had begun to groan with overcrowding, so Dan decided to make the largest personal investment of his lifetime and took out a mortgage on the three-storey, four-bedroom house in Clapham. It was not until they had spent their first few months there, happily throwing themselves about this newly acquired space, that Jackie reminded Dan of their conversation in the Central Park Diner. Three children and a house in a suburb south of the river. They had achieved it all, minus the dogs. Jackie said that the dogs could wait.

Dan had never paid much attention to the letters from headhunting firms that kept turning up in his in-tray. He was quite content to work in a familiar environment with colleagues that he knew and trusted. But there came the time when, at the age of five, Nina joined Millie at Alleyn’s School, and with Josh already attending Dulwich College for Boys, Dan suddenly found himself faced with paying three hefty school fees. Having tied up the greater proportion of his extensive savings in long-term investments, the effect on the family’s bank balance was immediate, even though Jackie had by now resumed work for three days a week with Rebecca Talworth. Either Dan had to find a better-paid job for himself or else such luxuries as their twice-yearly holidays abroad would have to be forfeited.