‘It was only a few pathetic idiots. And it made me stronger. Children will pick on anyone who’s a bit different. And you,’ she said, gripping both my hands and shaking them. ‘You live with your daughter. Just you and her. I heard at the office. I don’t know who told me.’

‘Scout. She’s nearly six.’ Tara waited for some kind of explanation. I shrugged. ‘It happens.’ I smiled to soften the words. ‘I didn’t plan it. Nobody plans to be a single parent. That’s the way it turned out. We were left to get on with it. And we did. We do.’

‘It must be hard.’

I shook my head.

‘Scout makes it easy. And it’s not really just the pair of us. There’s Stan, our dog. And we’ve got a lot of support.’ I thought of Mrs Murphy and her family. I thought of Scout’s buddy, Mia, and her family. I thought of my colleagues up at West End Central, who always found a spare desk and some pens and paper for drawing whenever I had to bring Scout to work. I thought of Edie Wren.

‘There’s a lot of people around us who want us to make it,’ I said.

‘I don’t know how you do it. Aaron – my husband – and I find it tough enough with a full-time nanny.’

I didn’t want to hear about Aaron the husband. I didn’t want to think about any of that. Not today. Not in here. So I touched her hair. Her shining, swinging, fabulous hair. I had wanted to do that for quite a while.

‘It needs a wash,’ she said.

‘Yes, it’s a disgrace,’ I smiled. ‘I don’t know how you have the nerve to step out of the house.’

‘Funny man. I’ve never seen you in a suit before,’ she said, running her fingers under the lapels of my jacket.

‘I got married in this suit,’ I said, and when I looked down at her hands on my lapel I saw that the blue wool was shiny with time. I had never noticed that before. My wedding suit was old.

She brought her face close to mine.

‘You should get a new one,’ she whispered.

She gave me a coffee-flavoured kiss and slipped off the stool. ‘Time to get back to the real world,’ she said.

The traffic was unmoving on Shaftesbury Avenue when we started back to West End Central so I put on the blues-and-twos and everything that blocked our path quickly got out of the way.

‘Oh God!’

Tara sank deep into her seat, laughing with some combination of embarrassment and delight as the two-tone siren howled and the grille lights blazed and London made way.

We laughed out loud all the way back to Savile Row.