‘Just got to check something,’ I announce, standing up and waggling my phone about. But no one’s paying the slightest bit of attention to me. I smile at the murderous-looking bouncers as I walk past them and step back out into the dying afternoon light on Shoreditch High Street.

The email is just as I remember it. I don’t bother to read the whole thing, just scan it to make sure the general gist is the same. Thank you so much for sending … Shows great promise, but unfortunately … And then the killer blow at the end: I think you’re Patrick’s son, is that right? Pat and I go WAY back, so I’ll mention you next time I see him!

I put the phone back in my pocket and think about how I reacted to this email first time round. Not well, is the answer. I felt utterly broken and desperate: like a total failure. Daphne called me as I stood outside this very club, and when I told her what had happened, she came straight back from work to meet me at my place. We then spent a dreary evening together dissecting what might have been wrong with my manuscript.

Now, looking back, I honestly find it hard to believe that I was such a jumped-up, overly melodramatic dick.

Like Harv said, I was only twenty-four years old. Did I honestly expect that the first thing I wrote would get published? Who the hell did I think I was?

The answer to that seems staggeringly obvious now. I thought I was my dad.

The first play he wrote was staged at the Young Vic theatre when he was twenty-four – though obviously I found that out from Wikipedia rather than him. And I suppose I thought … Well, what did I think? That if I performed the same trick, he might reach out to me? That he might get back in touch once he realised how similar we really were? I don’t know. It sounds stupid, obviously. But despite him leaving, despite what he did to Mum, he’s still my dad. I guess I always imagined that at some point we’d be close again. If I’m honest, I still do.

I watch the furry white sun disappearing gradually behind Liverpool Street station, and wonder for the zillionth time why all this is happening. I look down at my watch and find myself wishing that the watch-seller was here. He told me he’d see me again: ‘I guarantee it.’ Well, where is he now? There’s so much more I need to know …

I unfasten the watch strap absent-mindedly, half expecting to be whizzed straight back to the present as soon as it’s off my wrist. But nothing happens. On the back of the face, though, I spot something I didn’t notice before. A block of worn-off lettering. An address: 15 Foster Road, Bloomsbury, WC1A. That’s central London …