I totter down the darkened, narrow streets. The City is dead at this time of night, when all the party animals are ensconced in bars and everyone else with any sense is already at home. All the shops are closed and shuttered—Xpress Copies, Londonsandwich.com, Wily Wine Merchants. There are never any people around—or taxis. I head off to somewhere more populated, regretting that I have a long, late train journey home too. When I’m old and grey and hobbling round in comfy slippers, I will be able to pinpoint this as the very night my bunions started. I am just so going to have to sort out my life.

A taxi whizzes past, ignoring my frantic attempts to hail it. And I plod along some more. I’m not far from St Paul’s Cathedral and the Underground station but I hate taking the Tube at night because I’m always getting groped by drunken men in pinstripe suits and would rather go straight to the mainline station, but needs must.

Passing a group of children—well, teenagers—I wonder what they’re doing out, hanging round the streets on a freezing winter’s night. I bet their parents have no idea where they are or what they’re up to. Gone are the days when children stayed at home in the evening entertaining themselves with colouring books and board games. There are four of them, and two of them have on only hooded sweatshirts, and I marvel at the ability of kids not to feel the cold. Perhaps they hope their baseball caps will keep them warm. They’re leaning up against the wall near inside the entrance to a dark, narrow alley way, oozing attitude, and it looks to me as if they’re scratching graffiti onto the brickwork, but I can’t be sure.

‘Hello, darling,’ one of them shouts as I walk past. ‘Want a good time?’

They all laugh, silly boys’ giggles.

It brings a smile to my face too. My second offer tonight. Lucky me. I laugh, too—at the sheer nerve of them! I don’t think any one of them is old enough to shave yet. What are kids these days coming to? But before I have a chance to formulate a suitably cheeky riposte, they’re on me. One of them kicks me in the back and I fall to the pavement. Someone is yanking on my hair and my handbag. Out of instinct rather than a desire to protect my bag, I pull it towards me and earn myself a blow from a well-aimed foot to my stomach. They have their hoods up on their sweatshirts but I can still see the anger in their bitter, young faces.

‘Come on! Come on! Get it!’ one of them shouts, panic in his not-yet-broken voice.