There is the sound of clanking in the background and I imagine him rooting through drawers, his mind somewhere else entirely. The noise stops. ‘Yes. I took her back,’ he says, ‘when she had to go.’

‘Did she ever come back?’

I wait.

‘No, love,’ he says eventually. ‘I don’t think she did. Love, I can’t find my …’ he stops again, ‘oh, you know that thing. The thing that goes round …’ I blank out his words as his frustration rises and I know I have lost him again.

I fight back the tears when I hang up. They are tears of exasperation, anger, and a desperate need to get to the truth. But at the same time there’s a fear that if I do I won’t like it.

You are lying, Dad.

Before the end of that summer I never would have believed it was possible. Not my dad. He was the most straight-up person I knew. In conversations like we’ve just had, I see snatches of that dad again. Since his dementia diagnosis, there have been plenty of pieces of him that have been taken away from me but many have been given back. When he takes me to happier times on the island it makes it hard to believe he could lie.

Outside I take a deep breath of the cold fresh air, a few spots of rain drop on to my face, and for a moment I stand awkwardly in the middle of the small cluster of shops, not knowing which way to turn.

As the rain starts falling more heavily, flashes of bright umbrellas begin to pop up, but through them I catch sight of Meg, her arms flailing wildly in the air, her face as hard as stone as she shouts at her mum.

Emma’s face is passive, willingly taking whatever her daughter is throwing at her. I fall in step behind a couple of young girls sheltering in a shop doorway under a large pink brolly and move closer to Meg and her mum.

‘Why won’t you just leave it?’ Meg shouts, fear dripping from her words. ‘Keep away from him.’

Emma doesn’t answer, but as the young girls dip into the shop I am left exposed and staring straight at Meg and her mother. Emma turns and gapes at me while Meg throws her hands in the air. ‘I give up,’ she screams, before running off.

‘Emma, is everything alright?’ I venture.

Her face is wet with rain but I can make out tears glistening in her eyes.

‘Emma, are you okay?’

She shakes her head, almost imperceptibly, before she too walks away, in the opposite direction of her daughter, leaving me alone again, hair plastered to my scalp as water drips down the back of my neck.

The sooner I get off this island the better.