Zach stopped outside a side door, turned and waited for me to catch up.

‘You can come in,’ he said. ‘But you’ve got to keep your voice down.’

Inside it was obvious that, despite the garage doors at the front, the place had originally been built as a workshop with a pitched wrought iron and glass roof designed to let in all that thrifty late Victorian sunlight to save on gas. Age and neglect had yellowed the glass to near opacity, except at the far end where it had obviously recently been cleaned.

The bare brick walls had been whitewashed and then painted pastel shades of pink, green and yellow. There were bookshelves in one corner, a line of sinks and a wet area in another. Underfoot was industrial grade lino and easy to clean carpeting in green and brown. Munchkin sized chairs and tables sprouted in little clusters. A mural on one wall caught my eye – a depiction of an orangutan sitting at a reading lectern in the style of Paul Kidby.

The group of ten or twelve children inside was not a surprise, nor the fact that, having spotted Zach and his armfuls of goodies, they surged forward like a sugar starved tidal wave. What was a surprise was that they did it in almost total silence. They were children of the Quiet People, the people who lived under Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove, pale-skinned and big-eyed and not normally seen above ground. Many of them had pale blonde hair that had not yet darkened to their usual light brown. As I watched them being marshalled into their assigned seats, all the while stealing glances at Zach as he unpacked the bags, I found myself trying really hard not to think of a brick wall.

The young woman marshalling the children was similarly slender and pale with chestnut coloured hair in a neat French plait down her back. She’d obviously discovered the joys and practicality of skinny jeans, but above the waist she wore a pale yellow high collared blouse and waistcoat. She was wearing dark glasses indoors although, I realised, her charges were not.

Zach had his bags open and was laying out neat plates of rhubarb and custard doughnuts, Belgian buns and iced fingers on undecorated earthenware plates that were beautiful in the simplicity of their curves. There was a low gurgling, rumbling – loud in the unnatural quiet of the nursery. Zach’s stomach.

A ripple ran through the children, a whisper of laughter that passed from child to child. Their teacher gave Zach an indulgent smile, and he gave a little wave back. Then I recognised her, Elizabeth Ten-Tons, whose father was King of the Quiet People, or if not king then lead gangmaster or chief mining engineer or something like that.