While she was in her kitchen making coffee I sat looking out at the deserted close and letting the image of my father as a lovely boy awkwardly settle over the different contours of my own picture. Angela couldn’t manage to carry the tray so I brought it through for her while she shuffled breathlessly in my wake. She was doubly trapped here in her massive solitude.

We sat and drank our coffee: there were thin china cups and chocolate wafer biscuits set on a matching plate. My visit was clearly an event.

I told Angela about Lola and Jack, and she described her grandchildren and then talked about the years that had intervened since I had last seen her. The sound of her laughter came back to me through the thickness of time – it was a young girl’s rushing giggle, held close in her throat as if she didn’t want to let too much of her amusement be audible. None of the aunties ever stood a chance of taking Viv’s place, but Angela had been one of the better ones. At least she didn’t treat me as though I were a direct rival for Ted’s attention and therefore an enemy. I tried to work out how long she had lasted. It might have been as much as six months, but she was definitely gone when I came back from my summer in Grasse.

Our coffee cups were empty and Angela had eaten the wafers. Her tongue flicked out to prospect for stray crumbs round her lips. The sun streamed into the room, filtered into stripes by the blind and I felt drowsy.

‘Are you on holiday up here, then?’ she asked.

‘In a way,’ I answered.

‘On your own, are you?’

‘Yes.’

She pursed her mouth so it turned into a little purplered bud in the mottled plain of her face. ‘You’re looking for something.’

It wasn’t a question so I didn’t try to deflect it. In any case, in the silence of the bungalow with her girl’s laugh in my head I felt my defensiveness eroding. The quest was taking over; it was easier to say what I felt rather than try to hide it. ‘It’s more that I wanted to talk about him. I know it’s too late to change anything now that he’s dead, but I want to hear someone else’s version of him.’

Audrey. You should be asking Audrey for this, a voice intoned in my head.

How was it that I could remember Angela perfectly well, and Viv and Maxine and all the others, and Audrey not at all? If it was because I’d never met her, why was that?

I told Angela, ‘My memories are all distorted, you see. I’m angry with him because I think he neglected me but if I could see past that, if I could understand why, I might mind less.’