We could have gone round in circles a lot longer, I suppose. If we were younger, easier, less proud. All I was left with was: ‘I DON’T FUCKING KNOW. I’m sorry if that isn’t good enough. I’m afraid it just has to not be good enough. You know how sometimes you just have to start walking to see which way the blob is going on the map? That.’

‘Why are all your analogies about phones?’

‘Oh for god’s sake.’

‘You need to be a lot clearer on this if you want me to understand, Jenny.’

‘Well, I don’t know 100 per cent whether I want one, but I want to keep the possibility open.’ I feel rushed and limited and very mortal. I said: ‘Do YOU feel that you’ve interrogated things fully?’

He looked frantic, then. ‘Don’t pin me down on this!’

‘You’re the one pinning me down, asking impossible questions about resentment! I’m not a fortune-teller!’ I’m a fortune-teller’s daughter.

He nodded and looked out over the street at the man in his kitchen. He was still making a cup of tea. For all I knew, Art had been having similar fantasies about him. And then Art said: ‘I just don’t want us to get to our fifties and you be resenting me. That’s all.’

‘I promise you I won’t let it get to that.’

‘But how do you know, if you’re not a fortune-teller?’

‘Maybe I have a little of it in my DNA.’

Art looked at me and said, with a horrible gentleness: ‘I don’t want this to become a point of self-torture, because neither of us have time for that.’

‘Oh, I always make time for self-torture.’

MY MOTHER

and I walk towards the gallery. She takes my hand and I let her.

‘You’re not off the hook, by the way, about binning my school files.’

‘You really should have said if they were so important.’

And then I see the milling crowd through the glass windows. I tell myself to be strong. To walk tall. That’s it. Hold yourself together. Walk like a man. I am Ripley in the lift with the flame-thrower. I can do this.