Back in the present, as ever, Dodge’s eyes would not meet those of the three females in the room, but he knew how gratefully his skills had been appreciated.

It was only then that I realized that the set of drawers which formed the structural basis for Amy’s dressing table had once sat underneath the doors of a genteel television-disguiser.

So, it was appropriate that my next visit that morning was to see Minnie in her care home. It’s a local authority one and only just the right side of adequate. The old girl hadn’t fully recovered her speech after the stroke which put a stop to her independent life. I could understand her slurred sentences because I’d worked at deciphering them, but I doubted whether any of the overworked care-home staff had had time to put in that kind of effort. A lot of them didn’t have English as a first language, so sometimes it was difficult for Minnie to understand them as well. And most of the other residents were too demented to hold a sensible conversation, anyway.

I never asked, but I have a horrible feeling I was Minnie’s only visitor. In spite of her disability, though, she could still read and more-or-less write. So, she kept up her endless search for more information about London. And I worked hard to decipher the nuggets of information she passed on to me. For instance, I left the care home that day, knowing that meat sold at the February 1814 Frost Fair on the frozen Thames, at the extortionate price of a shilling a slice, was known as ‘Lapland mutton’.

For lunch I got a tuna and cucumber sandwich to eat in the Yeti and while I was in the Co-op bought a copy of the Guardian. Though I get the Observer delivered at the weekend, I only buy a daily when I know I’m going to have time to read it. There are many days when work takes over and all I’m capable of when I get home is getting something basic to eat and slumping with a glass of Merlot in front of some mindless medical soap opera.

The Guardian’s front page was dominated by Ingrid Richards. A huge photograph – red hair blazing, the defiant dent of the shrapnel wound in her forehead – and tributes from famous friends and admirers – relegated all the latest international disasters and idiocies of government to second-feature status. The obituary inside spread over more than one page.

I remembered Oliver’s assertion that journalists thought they were far more important than they actually were, but the list of Ingrid Richards’ achievements justified the space she was allotted.

I was amazed at how many wars she had covered. That tall red-haired figure with a microphone reporting from a vista of shattered concrete had become so familiar on the television screen that one almost forgot that they were all different theatres of destruction. Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Palestine, East Timor, Libya, Syria, Yemen … wherever the inhumanity of war was on display, Ingrid Richards had been there. Usually in body armour, with the strap of a leather satchel diagonally across her front.