‘She’s OK. She’s pretty much kept me together over the past couple of weeks. I don’t know what I’d do without her.’ Despite everything, the truth of that statement hits me like a train.

‘That’s good.’ Dad waves his lighter in front of me. ‘Do you mind if I …?’

‘No, go ahead.’

He rolls the window down and lights the cigarette, inhaling deeply.

‘How’s Bianca?’ I ask him. Bianca was the woman he was with the last time we spoke on the phone. After Clara, there was Lucy, then Fay, then Bianca, each one a few years younger than the last.

He sucks on the cigarette and rubs at his stubble again. ‘Bianca? Christ. No, that was years ago. Bianca’s long gone.’

I nod. ‘Right.’

He taps the cigarette ash out of the window and adds, ‘A bit of a nightmare in the end, Bianca. Complete headcase. Not sure what I was thinking.’

He shoots me a kind of roguish half-smile, which withers pretty quickly when I don’t return it. I have vague memories of him talking like this about all the women he dated after Mum. He would jokingly put them down; dismiss them as crazy or high-maintenance when the relationship failed. As a kid, I was impressed by it: it made him seem like this funny, swaggering man of the world.

It doesn’t seem in the least bit funny now.

‘No, I’m seeing someone else at the moment,’ he continues, taking another drag on his Malboro. ‘An actress from my play. Erin. She lives out in Brooklyn.’

I remember seeing the pictures of his play online: Erin was the lead role. Very attractive – and about my age, I reckon.

I watch him for a second, his cheeks hollowing as he sucks the cigarette. It strikes me suddenly that in the end, Mum was right. I only admired him because I didn’t really know him. All I had was this idea of him – successful, talented, dating a string of younger and younger women. But here, now, that idea doesn’t add up to anything. It certainly doesn’t seem to have made him happy. He just seems lonely and confused and messed up.

I don’t want to end up like that.