Three rounds of the new game – him spinning madly, me jumping in before the rack crashed – and we had three cards. King George V in uniform, Cliff Richard, a long-gone Duchess of Richmond dressed for a ball. Our mother could send those.

When we got back to her, she had her coat on and a cigarette lit and was looking out at the traffic on Marylebone Road. It was a Joanna Lumley pose, Purdey from The New Avengers watching for villainous activity, calf-length fawn coat falling to the tops of her glossy black boots, hair in a neat blonde bowl styled under at the ends, dusky-blue eye shadow. We’d watched the show on TV in the lead-up to moving here.

She took the change without checking it, slipped the cards in their white paper bag into one of her shopping bags and said, ‘All right then.’

She pulled Michael’s parka zip up all the way, he pulled it down a bit and we stepped out into an afternoon with a penetrating cold to it, the air smelling of exhaust, the cloud lowering.

‘Bus!’ Michael called out as one passed us.

‘It’s okay,’ our mother said. ‘They’re every five minutes and it’ll take us a couple of minutes to get to the stop. We’ll get the next one.’

She picked up the pace, her boots clicking on the pavement. The ash jolted from her cigarette and left grey-and-white flecks on the Marks & Spencer logo where it struck her shopping bag a glancing blow. Michael kicked at the fallen ash as we passed it, skittering the last of it across the footpath. At the traffic lights, while we waited for them to change, she took a final puff of the cigarette and crushed it into the ashtray on top of a nearby bin.

The bus was a red double-decker, its top level visible above the big black cabs and regular cars as it made its way down the road towards us. I picked Michael up and pointed to it, and he clapped his hands.

‘Upstairs, upstairs,’ he called out as the lights changed and we crossed the road.

Always upstairs. We knew that by now. Fifty minutes to Butterwick Bus Station, but being upstairs would keep Michael happy. That and a range of bus games – I Spy, spotting the alphabet from A to Z on numberplates.

Michael had his Matchbox London bus out of his parka pocket before the conductor even got to us. He looked up to watch the tickets spooling out of the dispenser swinging from a strap around the conductor’s neck. The conductor, his cap, his machine, his change satchel – the whole perfunctory interaction was for Michael part of the magic of riding in these huge red machines above the grubby streets. He had endured wax for this, all those figures that were unknown to him but not at all mysterious. And shopping, and a cafe cheese sandwich made from stale bread.