The residents of the Close were much concerned with crime – preventing it, that is. With all those out-of-work teenagers on the nearby council estate hanging around, stealing, joy-riding and goodness knows what else, it was just as well that Paul Mathieson was setting up a Neighbourhood Watch scheme.

          Not that the inhabitants of the Close did not have their own little activities, of course, but these were hardly the same thing. If Jenny and Alan’s daughter was caught travelling on the underground without a ticket, and their son was doing a little experimenting with certain substances, and Laura didn’t see the need to declare her earnings from hiring out her house to a film crew, and Jenny drove home only just over the legal limit – well, these were quite different matters, not to be compared with what went on in the Estate. And then there was Jenny’s discovery, when she advertised flute lessons, that she could work up quite a nice little earner in a rather unexpected way…

          As the leafy London street resounded to the efforts of its citizens to keep crime at bay, Jenny realised that it was her marriage, rather than her property, that needed watching.