The furniture in the small room was set out exactly as it had been in the front room of the Porters’ little terraced council house in Tottenham Hale. Dan had offered to buy her new furniture from Habitat, but she didn’t want “that rubbish” and insisted on moving everything from the old house. The ducks still flew up the wall, the picture of the Siamese girl with a tear in eye still hung opposite the black-and-white photograph of his mother as an excited young teenager, standing onstage at the Metropole with Bill Haley and the Comets, and the brown velour suite was still set around the fireplace (albeit now a false one) and angled towards the television. The only real difference was that, where the netted window in the front room of the old house looked out onto a line of parked cars and the dirt-engrained façade of the houses opposite, the view from the full-width window on the tenth floor of the block was unimpeded, taking in the curve of the River Thames from Wandsworth Bridge to Battersea Bridge and a broad panorama across Fulham and Chelsea, stretching on out to the White City Stadium and beyond.

Dan glanced at his watch and began worrying about yet another roast ending up on the bird table. He walked across to the door. “How are you doing, Mum?” he called down the passage.

“Just a minute, dear.” Her voice came from the bedroom. “I’m just slipping into a thermal. I’m feeling the cold a bit.”

“Be as quick as you can, then.”

She appeared at the door of the bedroom with only one arm slipped into a sleeve of her vest, revealing an ample frontage encased in a flesh-coloured brassiere. “I am, Dan. Just be patient.”

“Okay. It’s just the—”

“The roast. I know, dear. And while your mind is on cooking, you should have a look at that recipe I found for you in Woman’s Weekly. I left it open on the coffee table.” She eventually managed to struggle into her vest. “I thought it looked rather good.”

I’m sure it will be, Dan thought, as he went back into the lounge and walked over to the table. Her idea of a good recipe was cheesy chicken or spiced meatballs in gravy. He picked up the magazine. Yes, that would be about the norm. An exciting lamb stew with kidney beans. He dropped the magazine back on the table.

His mother appeared, doing up the buttons of her overcoat. “Right, that’s me ready.”

“Good. Let’s go then.”

“Don’t forget the magazine.”

Dan blew out a resigned sigh and scooped up the Woman’s Weekly.