What happened next sounds small; after all, it only meant turning the wheel. I was approaching Hendon. Instead of driving straight on, which led to Hendon, and then to Swiss Cottage, and then the West End, and then Stockwell, and then, eventually, to Peckham and the depot—instead of behaving as per usual, sound in wind and limb and brain—instead I indicated left. Two cars hooted, I cut across the slow lane, another lorry blared its horn and I was on the A1 dual carriageway, crawling east amongst the traffic which moved with me towards Finchley, and then Holloway, and on to Arsenal, until an hour later—well, it was the rush hour—I was inching my coach down the street I hadn’t set foot in for eleven years.

Ardley Street had tall terraced houses with butchered plane trees in front of them. It had stopped raining. I’m superstitious. When I saw a parking space long enough for my coach, opposite number 46, Lesley’s old place, my stupid spirits rose. I turned off the engine, turned off the radio, sat there and smoked a cigarette.

It was 9.15. I narrowed my eyes until the doorway blurred; I saw the door opening and a boy hurried out, carrying a satchel and a pair of football boots.

But he was too late for school, and I was too late by years, far too late. I knew that, of course.

Number 46 had been smartened up. Last time I’d been here, eleven years before, it was a tacky place divided into flats—concrete out front, dustbins and a broken motorbike, all that. Now it was painted white; there were blinds at the windows and tubs in the garden, still filled with last summer’s geraniums, and somebody had parked a Range Rover on the hard standing.

I thought of Lesley’s light glimmering in the ground floor flat, and her Hyde Park Rally poster in the window. I took out another cigarette, and then put it back in the packet. I climbed down from the coach and went across the road.

There was only one bell now; this was a family house. The door was opened by a woman with a scrubbed, creamy face. She looked at me politely.

‘I’m looking for somebody called Lesley Featherstone,’ I said. The name sounded clumsy; I hadn’t spoken it for so long. ‘Who used to live here.’

‘Gosh,’ she replied. ‘We’ve only just moved in.’ Behind her a baby was crawling along the floor like a caterpillar. ‘Naughty!’ she cried. ‘Naughty Abby.’ She picked it up and turned to me. ‘Lesley? Never heard of him.’

‘Her,’ I said. ‘It’s a woman.’ At the back of the hall I could see paint pots and a ladder.

‘We only moved in this year and we bought it from people called Lebovitz.’ She frowned. ‘I’m sure she was called Bettina.’

‘She lived here. She really did.’

The baby squirmed in her arms. She said: ‘Before then I think it was flats and God knows who they all were.’