When I left old Mrs. Fisherton’s by way of the area and the iron staircase that Saturday morning, I intended to find a route to the polytechnic. It had to be an itinerary that didn’t involve going in the underground or, to put it more precisely, going in the tube. If you’ve a phobia, you become very aware, not quite all the time but for part of every day, of the possible encounters you may have with whatever it is that threatens you. In the previous week I had found out, from an old street plan of my father’s and a book he had about London Transport, that a line runs from Baker Street via Paddington to Ladbroke Grove and Latimer Road and for none of its route does it pass underground. All I had to do was get to Paddington, which, according to the map, was a short walk away. If I had then had the A–Z I’d have seen there was a catch in it, but I had only bought the A–Z the day before.

It was a lovely morning, very warm for late September, and there were a lot of people about. That was when I first saw the au pairs doing their best to be nannies, Liv-lookalikes, one of them may even have been Liv, pushing buggies with one or two children in them and holding another by the hand. By the canal, then as now, the tourists congregated, walking very slowly, pointing out to their companions a particular house or a boat. One of the boats had vases shaped like swans all along its roof and green plants growing out of the swans’ backs. One of the houses had a vine with bunches of green grapes hanging against the white plaster facade. This is the smart bit of the canal, the part that lies between Blomfield Road to the north and Maida Avenue to the south. I stood on the bridge along with the tourists and looked along the canal’s shining course to where it disappears under the low arch into the Maida Hill tunnel. Outside the café above the tunnel mouth, people were sitting at tables having morning coffee or drinks, and I thought how I’d like to have been there myself, maybe with one dear friend, only the one dear friend I had had was dead.