Day one. Tuesday, February 6th.
I kept my promise.
The alarm went off at seven and I turned it off and got out of bed without waking Emma, which required the kind of tactical awareness that no coaching badge could teach, because Emma slept in the centre of the bed, diagonally, with her legs occupying approximately seventy percent of the available mattress and her hair occupying the remaining thirty, and any attempt to exit without disturbing the arrangement was an exercise in precision movement that would have impressed a bomb disposal unit.
I made it to the kitchen. I put the coffee on. I walked to the Turkish shop on Lordship Lane, which opened at six-thirty because Mr. Kemal believed that London deserved fresh bread and mushrooms before seven and that any shopkeeper who opened later was, in his words, "lazy and disrespectful to the morning."
