As Quinn turned onto Regent’s Park Road, the city changed. The busy, dirty streets of Camden made way for the green gentility of Primrose Hill. Beautiful town houses with well-kept front gardens and perfectly painted shutters overlooked the park. Runners in designer Lycra with swishing ponytails bounced past. There were well-heeled people walking well-heeled dogs and distinguished-looking gentlemen in long camel coats, walking purposefully along the pavement with newspapers tucked beneath their arms.

‘This is only about a mile from where I grew up, but it feels a world away,’ said Minnie, watching the people and the houses that they passed. ‘I haven’t been back here for years. Isn’t it funny how a place can revive such vivid memories from your childhood? There was a youth club we used to go to up in Kentish Town – if you didn’t get off the night bus at the right place, you ended up on the bridge right there,’ Minnie pointed down the street.

If you lived in a city for long enough, Minnie thought, the streets and the places where life happens fold inwards like paper, making space for new memories. Yet visiting old haunts and a long forgotten road was like stretching the concertina out again – the memories leap out, fresh as the day you folded them away.

‘Bambers,’ Minnie muttered to herself.

Quinn laughed, ‘I remember Bambers.’

‘I think Bambers has the honour of being the first place I threw up in after being introduced to Hooch,’ said Minnie grimacing.

Quinn turned to look at her; a strange flash of something crossed his face. He squinted his eyes, a twitch of confusion. His reaction made Minnie feel as though she must have said something wrong. She turned to look out of the window. No doubt girls in Quinn’s world didn’t talk about times they got drunk and threw up.

When she was ten or eleven, Minnie and her best friend Lacey sometimes used to walk down to Primrose Hill Park after school. They’d make up stories about who lived in these colourful houses and what they’d done to make their money.

‘Inventing cheese graters,’ Lacey would say, pointing to a yellow mansion with frosted windows.

‘Bouncy castles,’ Minnie would laugh, pointing to the cream-coloured house on the corner. Every time they walked to the park, the stories would become more elaborate. Lacey concocted a whole back-story for the Cheese Grater Family – apparently there had been a family rift about the optimal size of the grating holes.