It was dark by the time I parked on the embankment and there was a cold wind racing up the Thames bringing threats of rain. The tide was turning and I could feel the Thames pushing upstream and slapping at the exposed shingle. I was early enough that Beverley was still in the main bar.

I spotted her by the window, waving at me. She was wearing a purple knit top with a neck wide enough to slip off her shoulder and had her dreads tied back with a matching purple woollen scarf. An oxblood leather jacket was draped over the back of her chair. She’d managed to score a table despite the crowd and even had a free seat waiting for me. As I slid in beside her a complete stranger put a half of lager down in front of me and walked away.

‘Do you even pay for these?’ I asked.

She leaned close to murmur in my ear. ‘This close to high tide I’m not sure I could make them stop,’ she said and then she kissed me on the lips before introducing me to the others at the table. She’d brought a couple of her white friends from Queen Mary’s where she’d started reading — you don’t study at uni, you read — Environmental Science. She’d sold this to her mum on the basis that while it wasn’t the law or medicine it was a little bit like engineering, if you squinted. And even Lady Ty couldn’t argue with Queen Mary for university snob value. Bev’s friends included Douglas, who would have been a hipster cliché had he been able to manage the beard, and Melanie, who was one of those round perky people who give the impression that it’s only a great effort of will stopping them from bouncing around the room. I’d once asked Beverley whether she told them she was a goddess of a not-so-small river in South London and she said – sure, course she did.

‘And?’ I’d asked.

‘They think I’m some kind of New Age weirdo,’ she’d said. ‘The dreads help.’

Beverley said that she found that people stuck the first vaguely appropriate label on, whether it fit the facts or not.

‘It’s too much effort to tell them otherwise, isn’t it?’ she’d said. ‘Besides, then you’ve got to explain stuff . . . And aren’t we supposed to be keeping a low profile?’ Then she’d done a Nightingale saying – ‘I’m keeping to the agreements and trying not to scare the horses.’

Beverley had a ton of friends at uni, but these were the only two that were interested in jazz. Not enough to know who my father was without looking him up on Wikipedia, but interested all the same.

‘And it’s in a good cause,’ said Melanie, which was news to me so I looked at Beverley.