‘“Go now!” Lin says. I turn to her: “Come with me.” But she doesn’t want to, she’s just about to burst herself. She promises to put some pillows down my bed later and she gives me her slippers and her cardigan . . .’

Connie paused, lost in a reverie.

‘So you just walk right out of there?’ Emma asked, her voice low, urging her on.

‘I never thanked her. I don’t even know if she had a boy or a girl.’

For a moment, she looks as though she’s finished talking.

‘Then what happened, Connie?’

‘I just race out of there into the rain in the clothes I have on and dart into the bushes towards the gate. I have no idea where I am, the outskirts of the city somewhere, in this forgotten place that no one wants to go to. I have no memory of even arriving there. I start to run, heading down side streets until I feel far enough away to stop. No one’s following me so I stop running and just follow the sound of the traffic until I come to another main road where people seem to be going about their rushed businesses in the rain. Nobody pays me any attention at all.

‘I feel good. I’m free; I can’t believe it. But it’s getting dark and I’m cold and wet so I decide to catch a bus. The first bus that pulls up says it terminates at Sloane Square. I know I can get the 22 home from there. I wait with a group of people under the shelter and the bus pulls up. I slip on at the getting-off doors behind a couple of young girls. The girls are giggling and I wonder whether they are laughing at me and my patches of hair and Lin’s slippers. I suppose I look a right sight. I climb to the top deck and sit at the back and soon warm up. A man in front of me has glasses on and I’m pretty sure he is spying on me, filming me; they are special spy glasses. Then he gets off, pretending to ignore me. The journey takes for ever but I don’t care; I look out of the window at the wet streets and people have started to put Christmas decorations in the shops, in the houses. I start to get excited. I think of the kids. I think of all the Christmas shopping I need to do, stocking fillers and presents. There’s so much to get on with. It seems like hours before I change buses and get back to Putney . . .’

Connie’s eyes were still closed but she paused; she was thinking, lost in remembering.

‘And what happened when you got there?’