London leaver: 'I didn’t want my girls growing up feeling scared'

After more than a quarter of a century living in London, Ambika Marrafino clearly remembers the exact moment she decided she had had enough.

She, her husband Alessandro, and their daughter Valentina, now five, were living in a two-bedroom Edwardian maisonette in Chiswick.

Ambika was expecting her second child, Arabella, now three, and was on her way home after treating herself to an after-work massage.

She had just got into the car when she found herself surrounded by a gang of balaclava-wearing youths on bikes attempting to open her doors.

Thankfully she had already locked the car but she was left shaken by the incident. “I drove off to get away from them, but they thought I was following them and they got out a knife and started shouting at me,” she says.

“It was very scary. I had been in London since 1995 and I never imagined leaving but I got home and said: ‘That’s it, I’m ready to leave’. I just didn’t want my girls growing up feeling scared.”

Ambika, now 35, and Allesandro, 37, both work in central London – she is the co-founder of a PR agency and he is the partner at a law firm – so they needed to remain within easy commuting distance of London.

Without family ties drawing them to any particular area Ambika decided to base the choice on where to move on convenience and home comforts.

She began actively seeking out locations which possessed either a Gail’s Bakery or an Ivy restaurant as well as decent Deliveroo options.

She and Allesandro also decided they would prefer a newly built home, to save them the stress of dealing with a fixer-upper whilst simultaneously working and caring for a growing family.

Arabella was born in March 2022 and that summer, having sold their maisonette for £550,000, the couple spent £715,000 on a brand new four-bedroom house in Virginia Water, Surrey – a location which checked all the boxes.

Ambika’s journey to work now takes around an hour – she drives to Woking to pick up a fast train into London – compared to her previous journey of 45 minutes, which feels like a small price to pay for the extra space she has at home for the family plus their two dogs, Fonzie, a cavapoo, and bichonpoo, Romeo.

“It is just a dream, and worth the bigger mortgage,” she says.

The move meant leaving behind a close-knit network of London friends and neighbours but Ambika thinks that moving into a new development helped her rebuild.

“We have been part of a growing community,” she says. “Most of our neighbours are young and have moved from London with children. And I would let the girls go out and play, it feels very safe.”

Although Virginia Water’s high street is tiny Ambika has found plenty of good shops, cafes, and restaurants in the neighbouring towns of Woking, Weybridge, and Cobham.

The tiny, urban nursery she used to use for the children has been swapped for a semi-rural site with six acres of grounds and a petting zoo.

“I can’t believe the difference,” she says. “It did take us a couple of years to settle in and find our place, but it has been so worth it.”