We pursued him into the street where Bridge spotted him again, walking up College Road past the Costa Coffee. We almost managed to kid ourselves he hadn’t seen us on account of our amazingly effective spying techniques, but then he turned sharply into Harrow-on-the-Hill station with the air of someone who knew exactly how to find a crowd when he had to.

“He’s escaping,” cried Bridge. “My fiancé’s escaping.”

She broke into a run, shedding a shoe as she went. I retrieved her shoe and followed. Melanie followed me. And then, annihilating the last remnants of our subtlety, Priya’s truck pulled over and began kerb-crawling along beside us.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, only mildly hysterically, as Priya rolled down the window.

“What do you mean what am I doing? We’re following Tom.”

“Yeah, but”—I was rapidly running out of breath—“discreetly.”

“Mate, Bridge is pelting through London with one shoe on, and I’m driving a giant black truck. Discreet was never an option.”

“Okay, but we still need to get him.”

Priya kept driving. “Fine. I’ll just ditch my truck here in this pedestrian crossing.”

The door opened and Liz stumbled out, realising slightly too late that slow for a motorised vehicle was unreasonably fast for a human being. “Come on.” She made a beckoning noise to James Royce-Royce who was unbuckling Baby J’s car seat.

“Be very careful,” he admonished us as he scooted across the truck and passed Baby J to Mel, who had joined us in the walk-slowly-next-to-a-truck-a-thon. “James would have kittens if he knew I’d passed our little boy out of a moving vehicle.”

After Baby J was safely transferred and then, once James Royce-Royce was on the pavement, safely transferred back, we dashed up the station steps to follow Bridge. Or at least Mel and I dashed. James Royce-Royce followed as quickly as he could, given his embabyment, and Liz kept a vicarly pace beside him.

Inside, we’d just hit rush-hour crowds, and I could barely tell where one face began and another ended. But then I wasn’t Bridge and hadn’t developed her highly attuned Tom senses. She saw him swiping his way through a ticket barrier and dashed after him, scrambling over the gates rather than stopping to find her card—and drawing the attention of a Transport for London guard who immediately set off after her. Which left me with two choices: either hang back with an air of supportive dignity or kick off a ludicrous Benny Hill chase through a crowded Tube station.

Benny won.