'Blimey. Have I got a spiritual side?' Jimmy asked.

'Well, I certainly have.'

'OK, prove it.'

'What?'

'Come on, we're being interviewed. I'm the head of the school. Do you believe in God?'

'Yes, absolutely,' Monica replied firmly before adding, 'sort of.'

'Sort of, Mrs Corby? Sort of? This is a church school.'

Monica collected her thoughts.

'Well, I certainly believe in something bigger and more important than us . . .'

'Good,' Jimmy replied in his role of stern interrogator. 'Can you perhaps be more specific?'

Monica thought hard.

'A force. A reason, so to speak. I mean there has to be a reason, doesn't there? A greater purpose? Greater than us, certainly, and I'm very happy to call that God if you want. In fact, yes, I do call it God and I believe in it . . . and I was a Girl Guide.'

Jimmy looked at her for a moment and smiled.

'That was brilliant, Mon,' he said.

'You really think so?'

'Sold me. And if God is love, I truly believe that I love you even more now than when I first loved you. Which is fucking saying something, incidentally. Therefore, I experience God every moment of my life.'

'Wow, Jimmy,' Monica said, very touched. 'That's lovely.'

'Do you think I should say it?'

'Maybe. See if a moment comes up. But lose the swearing.'

Monica kissed him.

'That's got to be enough, hasn't it?' Jimmy said, printing out the application form. 'Enough for the Church of England? I mean we believe in something called God, we're English and we're big on love. That must cover all the bases.'

'I think so,' Monica said. 'I mean it would be different if we were pretending to be Catholic, those guys play serious hardball, but anybody can pretend to be C of E, I'm sure of it.'

Once more they studied the website and found themselves getting quite excited.

'It really does seem like a very nice school,' Monica said. 'Look, a stringent anti-bullying policy.'

'And free,' said Jimmy.

'A belief in bringing music teaching back into schools.'

'And free,' Jimmy said again.

'An emphasis on traditional subject matter but inclusively multicultural.'

'And absolutely fucking free,' Jimmy repeated. 'Amazing. We should have sent Tobes there in the first place.'

Monica thought the photos on the site of the previous year's nativity play looked very sweet and the school was also big on football, which would make Toby happy.

'It says they're always happy for parents to come along and help coach,' Monica said.

'I certainly have plenty of time,' Jimmy replied ruefully.

'Subject to stringent police checks,' Monica added.

'Ah. Well, I don't think I'm on the sex offenders list, but if they check my credit rating I'm off the squad.'

They both laughed. They had always laughed a lot together but not so much lately since their troubles began. It felt good.

The second-nearest school also had a good exam-result rating, and although not actually a church school it looked smart and well run. It was rumoured that a local rock star had sent his children there for a couple of years.

Neither school was quite Abbey Hall, of course, in that their classes were twice the size and their facilities considerably smaller. On the other hand, Jimmy doubted that they would turn Toby into a crack dealer before he had had time to get their fortunes on an even keel again.

'And they're co-educational,' Monica said, 'which frankly I prefer. For a start it means Cressie can start there next year and we won't have two separate school runs, which I was dreading when we were planning to send the girls to St Hilda's.'

They decided to apply for the C of E school as their first choice and the other one as their second, but felt confident that they would be happy with either. Unfortunately everybody in their area felt the same about these two schools and they were both massively oversubscribed.

Toby failed to get into either and was instead placed at Caterham Road, the large Victorian edifice on the very edge of the borough, from which, as far as Monica could see, the middle class had fled. It seemed to cater exclusively for tough estate kids and the children of newly arrived immigrants.

Monica cried for about three hours and then began writing letters and sending emails. She wrote to the head teachers of her preferred schools, she wrote to the boards of governors, she wrote to the council and she wrote to her MP. She went personally to the town hall on several occasions, demanding an interview with a representative of the local education authority.

Not surprisingly, every parent felt that their child had a right to go to the most desirable school. When Monica finally got to see someone from the authority, her one argument, that coming so suddenly from a posh school her son would be an obvious target for bullying, elicited very little sympathy.

'We have to find numerous places for children who have come straight from war zones,' she was told. 'I think your Toby will find readjustment easier than they do.'

Monica and Jimmy were eventually forced to face the fact that the only place the education authority was prepared to offer their precious, unique, more-special-than-the-rest son was at Caterham Road.

Monica was nearly hysterical at the prospect.

'We'll home-educate him!' she announced suddenly. 'You're not working, I'm not working. It'll be wonderful! We'll spend our days in the local library as a family. Have picnics together and visit museums and . . .'

Unusually for Jimmy, he put his foot down.

'No, Mon,' he said firmly.

'No? What do you mean, no?'

'A kid needs friends.'

'A gang, you mean. That's what he'll get. A gang. A knife gang. He'll get knifed.'

'Mon,' Jimmy said, 'I watch the local news every day. As far as I know, nobody has ever been knifed at Caterham Road.'

'Yes, but . . .'

'There are four hundred kids at that school-'

'Exactly.'

'They can't all be delinquents. They can't all take drugs. The majority have to be ordinary, OK kids. If those kids can make it at Caterham Road, then so can Toby.'

'But he's-'

'He's a nice, bright boy, Mon. That's all. Whose parents happen to be broke. Like lots of parents. That's the new reality. We have to face it. If it doesn't work out then OK, maybe we can look at other options, but we're not going to give in before we've started.'

'It's not about giving in,' Monica snapped, 'and it's not about you either, Jim. This is about Toby and-'

'Exactly, Mon! It's all about Toby and we have to give Toby the chance to make this work. If we start trying to cosset him now, trying to hide him from God knows what, wrapping him in cotton wool and locking the world out, he's going to look back and say that we didn't have any faith in him. That we didn't think he could cut it in the real world. That we didn't have enough respect for him to believe that he could survive stuff that most kids see as part and parcel of everyday life.'

'But . . . but he's so . . .' Monica didn't get any further. She was trying not to cry.

'Think about it, Mon. Seriously. What will he say when he's ten? Twelve? Fifteen? Sitting at home with a mad stir-crazy mum who's trying to simultaneously hothouse him for Cambridge and stop him ever meeting any other children? I don't know, maybe home education works for some people, geniuses or whatever. But Toby's not a genius. He's an ordinary kid. Like we were. I'd have hated home education. Wouldn't you? I'd rather have faced Caterham any day than be the weird kid with the weird mum. In fact I did face Caterham. You did too. We both went to state primaries and . . .'

'It was different then, and we started at the start, not in the middle, and it wasn't in London and-'

'I don't like it, Monica!' Jimmy said, more firm than gentle now. 'I wish it was different but it isn't. It's hard. It's going to be tough on all of us, mainly Tobes, but we have to face this together, as a family.'

Monica smiled.

'God. We've role-reversed, you bastard,' she said. 'I've gone all stupid and impetuous and you're pretending to be wise.'

'I used up all my stupid, gambling our entire lives on a massive property development,' Jimmy said, taking her hand. 'I'm all stupided out right now.'

Together they went upstairs and looked in on their son.

'He's just so posh,' Monica whispered unhappily as they stared down at him. 'We've made him so posh. And now we're going to send him to Caterham.'

'We'll just have to help him with that, Mon,' Jimmy whispered back. 'We'll do it. I promise.'

And so in the remaining time that Toby had at Abbey Hall and in the brief school-holiday period that followed, Monica and Jimmy found themselves desperately trying to get Toby not to speak posh.

They began with the glottal stop.

'There are no Ts in got to, Tobes,' Jimmy would explain, 'not any more. It's a single word, go-ah to rhyme with shocker, as in sorry, mate, I've go-ah go now.'

It was a near-impossible task to undo five years of expensively acquired grammar and pronunciation in a matter of weeks. There was no accent posher than the accent of a pre-pubescent boy who has attended an expensive English prep school. Later on, those boys would deliberately acquire a kind of slurred Mockney which, although still posh, would at least be twenty-first-century posh. But at seven years old they all sounded like Victorian choirboys or Oliver Twist in the 1948 David Lean movie. It made Monica weep to hear it.

'They'll kill him,' she whispered desperately to Jimmy, but Jimmy persevered.

'Tobes, mate,' he said, 'it's 'orrible, not h-orrible. The H is silent. All Hs are silent from now on, OK? Hs are the enemy. Repeat after me, I 'appen to 'ave an 'orrible 'eadache.'

Every man for himself 'Roop?'

The voice on the other end sounded buoyant enough but artificially so. Rupert trying to sound pleasant was never going to convince.

'Hello, Jimmy. What can I do for you?'

'I've tried five times this morning. You never pick up.'

'So I've picked up now. What's on your mind?'

'Mate, I need to ask a favour.'

'Well, you can ask, Jim.'

Jimmy tried to laugh. Laugh as if nothing had changed between him and his old friend. Laugh as they had laughed together just a few months before, when it had seemed that they owned London.

Jimmy did not own London any more, not any part of it. Certainly not his own house or the street he had bought against it. It had been only two months since his redundancy but already he had come to realize that the bits he had thought he owned actually owned him, holding him tight in a vicious coil of debt.

'OK, here goes,' Jimmy said. 'One of your guys from the RLB says there's a possibility that they might have to foreclose on Webb Street. I mean, that's got to be a joke, right? They're not going to do that.'

There was silence on the line.

'Roop?' said Jimmy. 'You still there?'

'Still here.'

'Well, what do you think?'

'Sorry. I didn't realize you'd finished.'

'Well, I have. They say they might want to foreclose.'

'They might. I mean if you can't service the interest on your debt.'

'Rupert, I have a cash-flow problem. I've lost my job. I won't be getting a bonus this year.'

'I know that, Jim. What do you want me to say?'

Suddenly Jimmy was angry. Rupert was being an arse.

'That you'll call off your people, Rupert! Obviously that's what I want you to say.'

'This is a branch issue, Jimmy. I'm the bloody CEO.'

'Exactly. You're the bloody boss.'

'It's a branch issue, Jim.'