There was no reason he wouldn’t be. No reason to question it.

But I was more than naive, as it would turn out. An idiot.

My one true role was to protect my son – and I failed.

But that realisation came much later, after my world flipped on its axis for the second time in three years.

Ruby

FRIDAY 14 JULY

If Melissa had been at the corner at the time we’d arranged to meet, she might have saved me from the inexorable fate hurtling around it.

But, although I’d lingered long enough in the fading light to elicit at least two twitches from expensive curtains nearby, along with the cold gaze of a silver-haired duchess-type in patent buckled shoes – a gaze that matched the blank-eyed stare of the grand houses on this side of the square – Melissa hadn’t arrived. Worse, nor was she answering my calls.

A droll ‘Where’s the tea dance?’ from a man in pinstripes didn’t reassure me about my choice of outfit either, although the teenager’s polite nod as he strolled across the street was much more welcome. A football mate of Zach’s, I thought, from our block; out of his natural habitat, perhaps, tracksuit bottoms adrift around his hips, giant headphones jammed down, but he reminded me my own home was only streets away – albeit in a different universe.

The uncomfortable polarity of Kensington and Chelsea – Britain’s richest borough – with the poorest neighbours. Double-gated Victorian mansions, sleek , Georgian townhouses: all overshadowed by the ugly inconvenience of concrete tower blocks. Immigrants and council tenants living centimetres from countesses, celebrities and oligarchs, while down the famous Portobello Road, market traders vied with foreign princes and media moguls for parking places.

Listen carefully and you might even catch a distant echo of the 1958 race riots, when an overspill of anger led to the eventual creation of the world-renowned Notting Hill Carnival.

So who exactly did it all belong to these days?

Not me, that was for sure. I’d ended up here by way of Yorkshire and marriage to a local lad – but it was home enough, today.

Nearly seven thirty and still no Melissa. Rare indeed for a woman who lived by her stopwatch: one of the many things I’d loved about her since she left an M & S steak pie, a bottle of Chardonnay and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s (melted) on my doorstep two years ago, at the very peak of my crisis. Her very reliable reliability.

Except for right now, apparently.

And, given that I couldn’t get hold of her, I had two choices – the more attractive of them being admittedly pathetic.

I took a deep breath and set off to find the house – alone.

Past the bijou boutique selling dresses more expensive than our monthly rent, past a subtle-looking restaurant boasting two Michelin stars, looking for number 74 proved more difficult than anticipated, but eventually I found it.

And when I did – the most imposing house on this side of the square, naturally – I rather wished I hadn’t.