On the left of the photo was Harry Seaton, his hair thick, curly and dark. He had one arm around a plump black woman – her apron spoke of her status in the household, but Harry’s protective arm evoked her special place in the family’s affection. On the other side of the woman was Helen Seaton, her head tilted towards the black woman in another, understated, sign of closeness. In front of them stood three children – two white, one black. Lindi was there, slightly to one side and looking across at her older brother, Ralph. He had his arm around a boy who, in turn, held Ralph’s waist. Harry, Maude, Helen, Lindi, Ralph and Kagiso, Maude’s only son. A portrait of togetherness in a divided nation.

Many years and thousands of miles away, that photograph of the Seatons and their house-worker, Maude, would grow in significance. It would come to occupy an almost totemic position in their recollection of a time when their credentials as opponents of apartheid were understood and taken for granted. After all, hadn’t Harry written the leader columns that had so irritated the apartheid government? And there was Helen’s voluntary work at the Legal Resource Centre that saw a stream of black petitioners queue up every day, clutching bits of paper that could change their lives. So how natural and effortless it was that Maude should be treated as one of the family.

But that was then; this was now. You couldn’t relive all that in a North London terrace.

Slowly, and unwittingly, they were drawn into an allegiance to their new life in London. In this they were led by Lindi and Ralph. Helen and Harry were the parents of the new kids in the local school. As the children made friends so Helen and Harry found they were pulled into a new social circle – a group of people brought together not by choice or conviction but by the arbitrary drawing of a line on a street map: they were all in the same school catchment area.