I remembered this place in the early 60s; it had been a slummy four-ways with dusty shop windows and more chemists and butcher shops than the area needed. There were casualties after that and the shopfronts went blank until the revival started. Now there were restaurants of every ethnic flavour, a patisserie, trendy second-hand shops and a glossy supermarket that stocked 38 varieties of pasta. I’d counted.

Trudi steered me to the health food shop that was shady and cool despite the heat in the street. ‘Hi, Charles,’ she said, ‘ ‘lo Madga.’

Charles was a sour-looking type with a pale, blotched face and stringy hair. He wore a black T-shirt and jeans with muscles-the white apron didn’t diminish him a bit. He was scooping something white from a tin into a jar and just raised the scoop a little to acknowledge Trudi.

‘Prick,’ Trudi murmured. ‘Let’s have two big ones, Madga.’

After Charles, Madga was like a lantern in the dark. She was small with a huge mass of glossy black hair and eyes to match. Her teeth were startlingly white in her smooth, olive-skinned face. ‘With onion, Trudi?’ she said. Her voice and accent were soft.

‘What about onion, Cliff?’ Trudi said. ‘Peter comes in here a lot and politicians can’t eat onion. Did you know that?’

‘Onion,’ I said. ‘Lots of onion.’

We got the sandwiches, which were thick enough to stand on and look over heads at the football, and two bottles of mineral water. I pretended to stagger under the load. ‘How far to the park?’

‘Half a kilometre.’

Oh, Christ, I thought. Someone who really lives in the 80s. That set me speculating on her age as we walked along the footpath beside the trucks and cars to the park. She came about four inches above my shoulder in her low heel boots, call it five foot four, or whatever the hell that is in centimetres. She walked nicely with a bit of a roll to her strong body.