Agnieszka looked at me and gave a gentle roll of her eyes. She was tidying toys away and had her back to her mother. ‘There’s always room for you with us, Mum,’ she said, in the sort of affectionate, sing-song-y way that suggested they’d had this conversation a few times already. ‘I keep telling you.’

‘I was showing the girls the photographs of the soup kitchen in Brune Street,’ Agnieszka said. She held the image out to me. ‘Four days a week they would give soup, bread, margarine and sardines. No questions asked. At one point, they had over four thousand people pass through the doors, according to Mum.’

What she said made me feel sad. It was often hard to look back on times gone by, especially when you’d lost people. Even if those times weren’t good, hindsight seemed to weave a rosy glow round the memories, making them seem as if they were somehow better. Particularly if the present was unsatisfactory; if it was haunted with ghosts and memories, the past could be such a cruel tormenter.

I took the black-and-white image from Rosa’s daughter. The old red brick building seemed so solid and proud. On its steps, people were queuing, thin as coat hangers inside their threadbare clothes, their skin stretched tight with hunger and desperation over protruding cheekbones.

‘Neska says the soup kitchen has been sold now. Converted into luxury flats. How much did you say, love?’

‘There was a one-bedroom penthouse apartment for sale on Rightmove for one and a half million pounds. No garden, no parking. It’s gone now. Sold. Snapped up no doubt by someone with more money than sense.’

Rosa was tutting irritatedly. ‘It’s wrong. That’s what it is.’ She took her spectacles off and tucked them into a case. ‘That building was enormous. Several floors. The equivalent of two or three shops in width. Imagine how much profit they must’ve made from that development.’

‘So much has changed.’ Agnieszka looked wistful. ‘Makes me furious. I grew up in this flat, but Olaf and I can’t afford to live in Tower Hamlets.’ She closed the living room door behind the children. ‘It’s people like Mum I’m worried about. People who have lived in Brick Lane for years.’ She paused, seemed to think about what she wanted to say. ‘Why don’t you let them have the shop, Mum? Buy somewhere near us and make a new life for yourself?’

Rosa sighed.

‘They keep pressuring you to leave. Why not give them what they want? It would make your life so much easier. Or take Tomasz’s help.’