We topped up our Oyster cards and the city was ours for the taking. Monday we went west and then east and then west again; on Portobello Road we stepped into Gail’s to sneak into the toilets, but we were waylaid by a pistachio meringue and a banana ganache biscuit. “Banana ganache,” I said, considering. I was trying to taste it. “Banache,” I said, feeling it on my tongue. We got one in a paper bag. It turned out the toilets were broken, so as we left we walked cross-legged and made sure not to laugh too hard.

We lured Laureen out of work and walked cross-legged to lunch at the Tate Modern. We went upstairs, first, to the members’ dining room, a curious punishment, really, as we fought mothers and their prams to the front of the queue to find that the menu posted on the wall had little to do with the sparse selection of boxed salads and cold sandwiches on display. (The toilets were very nice, however.) We went downstairs to the café, then, to a mezze platter, a portobello mushroom and taleggio burger, and a small heap of garganelli pasta. “Do you want dessert?” Maud asked, afterwards, and if we had had thought bubbles above our heads one would have contained a pistachio meringue lightly shaded in with a green pencil, and the other would have hosted a banana ganache biscuit, golden-brown and divine and with two bites taken out of it already. The thought bubble above Laureen’s head, though, was evidently of her modest and long-gone portion of pasta. “I want,” she said, “lunch.”