Our community has faced terrible heartbreak – and come together

I HAVE lived in W10 for 20 years. Latimer Road is my nearest station. And for the best part of a decade, I walked my son to school under the shadow of the Grenfell Tower. It became a part of our daily landscape, so familiar that we almost forgot it was there. Until this week.

Notting Hill may be one of the most culturally diverse communities in London, but it can also be one of the most privileged. It is one of the few places in the country where vast houses (the average house price is £1.7 million) sit cheek-by-jowl with estates.

Portobello Road – immortalised in Richard Curtis’s 1999 film Notting Hill – remains a halcyon strip, with its branch of Soho House and the Electric Cinema. Local residents include George Osborne, Stella Mccartney and Simon Cowell. Most days, an armed guard still paces the tree-lined pavement outside the home of former prime minister David Cameron.

Yet their neighbours are just as likely to patronise the local food bank as the restaurants that charge up to £25 for a starter. Two different worlds, which have rubbed against one another, day in, day out.

And yet, in the face of terrible heartbreak, the community has come together in a way I have never seen. Stories of generosity are everywhere.

The streets are teeming with people carrying donations. Spirits have been raised by visits from singers Adele and Rita Ora. Simply, the call went out and the community answered. Soho House has raised nearly £775,000 and counting. My friend, Sam Woroniecka, runs women’s clothing boutique The Cross. She alerted their 11,000 subscribers, the most glamorous and the wellheeled of Notting Hill. “Wealthy clients were bulk-buying milk, nappies and toiletries,” she told me.

After the fire, I wandered around my stamping ground as if seeing it for the first time. Near St Francis of Assisi Church, where my godson was christened, I came across a man with a van full of water and sanitary towels. “I have no idea where to take these,” he said. “They are from the people of Queen’s Park. Everyone wanted to donate.”

Down the road at the Portobello Rugby Club, they still needed volunteers. In the crowd, I spotted a mum from my daughter’s old school. “I will never forget the sound of the helicopters roaring overhead all night. I can still hear them if I close my eyes,” she said.

She was not alone in wanting to help. An Ethiopian couple from east London carried clothes and shoes. A Thai girl from Dartford had plastic bags balanced on wheels, a bucket of money

‘Stories of generosity are everywhere. The streets are teeming with people carrying donations’

tied around her neck, plus her son’s guitar. “He doesn’t need it anymore,” she said. “I thought why not? Someone might like it.”

And so we walked together: past notices offering free showers at the local Virgin Active (membership £100 a month), past the wall of condolence pinned to Latymer Church where they were drilling another white sheet into the bricks to cope with the tributes, until we arrived at the Westway Sports centre, where I had collected my son from football on Tuesday evening.

I watched as the Thai girl handed over her haul and saw the smile on her face. She had done something. She had not sat back and watched.

Until this week, the Grenfell Tower was just one of the many blocks that would cause me to occasionally glance up. Another estate, bisecting the rows of white stucco-fronted houses that hedge fund managers call home.

No one can ignore it now. Charred and blistered, it looms large like a giant tombstone against the summer sky.