It’s otherworldly enough to make me feel as though I’m on holiday, which may go some way to explaining why and how I have managed to spend over sixty pounds on my credit card on nonsense food—as though I have failed to understand an obscure exchange rate. As well as the baked goods, I have acquired two cartons of Kermit-green gobstopper olives, a tub of Extra Velvety Organic Hummus, champagne-pomegranate jam, some crystallised ginger ‘Luxuriously Enrobed in Dark Chocolate’ and three bottles of prosecco. (The third bottle was to compensate for the family sized trifle I abandoned at the checkout.) To be honest, I’m genuinely surprised the authorities let me through the tube barriers without patting me down to make sure that I already had some prosecco on my person. Surely it is the petrol on which the district runs. Unless there’s so much here already that it’s all a bit coals-to-Newcastle. I had imagined the streets were literally awash with it, Fulham as Venice, Audis and Pashleys floating along a sea of sweet, fizzy white wine.

I’m late, and I know my White Rabbit is behind one of these windows, hopping about impatiently and frowning at her graduation Cartier. Number 28. The door is painted a pretty pastel green, intended, I suppose, to evoke Mediterranean holidays and pistachio gelato—unfortunately it’s also exactly the same colour as the waiting room of the Thornton Heath Sexual Health Clinic. I try the knocker, a pale gold metal wreath of delicately intertwined flowers and branches. It makes no sound. I try it again. It comes off in my hand.

‘Imogen! Thank God,’ cries Louise, opening the door so quickly that I trip through it, throwing my pricey groceries down the hall, almost face planting into the hummus.

‘Louise, I’m so sorry, I’ll replace…’ She snatches the knocker from my hand. ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, it always does that. To be honest, it’s no bad thing if we don’t have a knocker this afternoon, far too many people are turning up as it is. It’s all a disaster, a fucking disaster.’

My hostess sighs heavily, and even though I’ve already bought her the best part of a supermarket, I realise there’s a much more useful gift I can offer her. ‘Do you want me to go? I can just…’ I gesture to the door.

‘You have to stay, for the sake of my sanity! It was just supposed to be the girls, but bloody Muffy told Hugo, and apparently the “lads” were all drinking in the Pear Tree, and of course Hugo is friends with Willo—I told you about Willo?’

‘Willow? Like the tree? Willow the Wisp?’