We lived opposite the great old meat market of Smithfield. At this time of the morning, the men were ending their long night shift. The butchers and porters were finishing the last of their loading and making their way to cafés and pubs that had opened long before dawn. A few were already outside the early morning pubs with pints of lager in their red fists, big men wilting in the daylight and blurry with exhaustion, white aprons smeared with blood and gore. As we walked through their world, some called out a greeting to Stan, and Scout and I smiled with pride.

He was a striking dog. In the pale daylight you could see the beauty of his colour – a rich chestnut somewhere between rusty red and old gold. His fur was wavy, and on the tips of those oversized ears there were ringlets of extravagant curls, as though he’d spent the previous evening with a fancy hairdresser rather than urinating on our furniture. Held in check by Scout, who had his leather lead wrapped twice around the wrist of her right hand, Stan trotted happily by her side, his small head up and alert, his tail stiff with anticipation and then whipping like a windscreen wiper in a thunderstorm when something caught his eye.

And Stan was amazed by everything. He stared with awe at a porter across the street having a cigarette outside the market. A jogger went by and Stan stood stock still, his head tilted to one side, as if witnessing an alien landing. Scout and I laughed. Most of our laughs came from the dog. He looked at a piece of chewing gum, or a discarded cup, or a shard of broken glass, and instantly lurched towards it, dragging Scout with him.

The sun was up now and making me squint: fresh autumn light can be more crystal clear than summer’s haze. I felt the rawness of the day and the bad sleeper’s burden – the knowledge that every hour would have its own weight and no amount of coffee would ever take the place of lost sleep. Yet I still needed more coffee, immediately.

There was an all-night stall near the market, serving mostly black cab drivers and meat porters, and I got in line while men with shaved heads and fierce faces fussed over the chestnut-coloured dog at my daughter’s feet. Stan leapt like a salmon, overcome with excitement, and they laughed, all the hard men of the London night, and I was happy then, knowing that our dog had yet to learn fear.