I almost gave up several times, telling myself that bright young things like Belinda wouldn’t possibly be in London in weather like this and I was wasting my time. But I kept going doggedly onward. We Rannochs are known for not giving up, whatever the odds. So I thought of Robert Bruce Rannoch, continuing to scale the Heights of Abraham in Quebec after being shot several times and arriving at the top with more holes in him than a colander, managing to kill five of the enemy before he died. Not a cheerful story, I suppose. Most stories of my gallant ancestors end with the ancestor in question expiring.

It took me a while to realize I was hopelessly lost. Belinda’s mews was only a few streets away from me and I had been walking for ages. I knew I’d had to move cautiously, one small step at a time, with my hand touching the railings in front of houses for security, but I must have gone wrong somewhere.

Don’t panic, I said to myself. Eventually I would come to a place I recognized and I’d be all right. The problem was that there was nobody else about and it was impossible to read the street signs. They too had vanished into the murk above my head. I had no choice but to keep going. Surely I’d eventually come to Knightsbridge and Harrods. I’d see lights in shop windows. Harrods wouldn’t close for a little thing like fog. There would be enough people in London who had to have their foie gras and their truffles no matter what the weather. But Harrods never appeared. At last I came to what seemed to be some gardens. I couldn’t decide what they would be. Surely I couldn’t have crossed Knightsbridge and found myself beside Hyde Park?

I began to feel horribly uneasy. That’s when I noticed the footsteps behind me—slow, steady footsteps, keeping exact pace with mine. I turned but couldn’t see anyone. Don’t be so silly, I said to myself. The footsteps could only be a strange echo produced by the fog. I started walking again, stopped suddenly and heard the footsteps continue another couple of beats before they too stopped. I started walking faster and faster, my mind conjuring the sort of things that happened in the fog in Sherlock Holmes stories. I stumbled down some kind of curb, kept going and suddenly felt a great yawning openness ahead of me before I bumped into some kind of hard barrier.