‘Not yet, no,’ Daff says. ‘I’m always on at him to.’ She shoots me a mock-pissed-off glare, and I’m not quite sure how to respond to it. I was always a bit shy about people reading my stuff, even in the early days. Probably because, deep down, I was worried they would compare it – unfavourably – to my father’s.

Mum’s giving me the mock-annoyed look now too, her mouth set squarely in a pouty frown. ‘Oh, well you must read some of it at some point,’ she tells Daphne firmly. ‘He’s brilliant, just brilliant.’

Even through the insane joy of seeing her again, I feel a familiar prickle of irritation. Firstly, I’m not brilliant, and secondly, Mum hasn’t read a single thing I’ve written since about Year 10 at school.

This was something that really got to me over the years: Mum’s pig-headed insistence that I was something more than mediocre. I always wondered what on earth she based it on. The fact that I’d won a couple of creative writing competitions at school? Maybe it’s just a trait all parents have; you can’t accept that your kid is no good, because that would mean there’s something wrong with you too. Even after all the rejection letters I received, and my so-called career spiralling down the toilet, she would still tell me again and again how brilliant I was. It used to infuriate me.

In fact, it’s what led me to say those terrible things to her before she died. She was just being supportive and kind, and I threw it all back in her face. I feel the guilt of it churning in my chest again, and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to stop the tears coming back. I took it completely for granted that she would always be there: my mum, fighting in my corner. And then one day she wasn’t, and everything seemed to collapse as a result.

I guess at this point, though – 2006 – I didn’t need anyone fighting in my corner. I was still pretty confident that I was some kind of genius-in-waiting. If I remember rightly, I was spending all my non-seminar hours writing a long, sprawling, entirely plot-free novel that was so meticulously ripped off Samuel Beckett it might as well have been labelled ‘fan fiction’.

Not that I realised it at the time. The future still seemed bright and full of possibility, and I knew that even if this book didn’t make things happen for me, sooner or later something else would. Back then, I assumed I had enough of my father in me to be sure of that.