In Leith's South Lorne Street, where she and her daughter lived for three years, "a group of local boys amused themselves on dull nights by throwing stones at my two-year-old's bedroom window".

On one occasion she had to shove a drunk out into the corridor after he had tried to force open her front door; another time she had to cope with being broken into at night while she and her daughter were both in bed.

"Violence, crime and addiction were part of everyday life in that part of Edinburgh," she writes. "Yet barely ten minutes away by bus was a different world, a world of cashmere and cream teas and the imposing facades of the institutions that make this city the fourth-largest financial centre in Europe.

"I felt in those days as though there was an abyss separating me from those carrying briefcases and Jenners bags - and, in truth, there was."

Once, she wrote, she was so poor that, when she was tuppence short for a tin of baked beans at the supermarket checkout, "I had to pretend that I had mislaid a £10 note for the benefit of the bored girl at the till." She would also visit Mothercare just because their baby-changing rooms offered a small supply of free nappies.

"I am proud to live here," she concludes, "and proud that my home city is committed to becoming a more inclusive place.

"One City seeks to unify: I cannot think of a better goal, for Edinburgh, Scotland or the world."