For a second, Gramps looks like he might argue the point. But then the laddish demeanour falls away and he softly nods. He says nothing, but I get the feeling he’s been there, that he knows what I mean.

We’re soon pulling up at the side of our road. ‘Welcome home, Ollie-wally,’ Gramps says as he shuts off the engine.

It’s been seven months since I left for school that May morning, but it feels like I haven’t set eyes on the place in far longer than that. Standing at the kerb, seeing its soft yellow painted walls, the slits of light escaping between drawn curtains, the house looks as it did when I was just a little kid. A place of happiness, of safety. Once inside, the warm smell of gas oven and the dense pile of carpet beneath my socks take me back to a time when I was insulated from the world in here. I’ve not felt like this for such a long time.

Gramps deposits my stuff at the foot of the stairs. He heads to the kitchen to make us a pot of tea. I step into the living room. Coloured fairy lights are draped over the furniture, combining to paint the room in rich amber. The Wall of Ollie is preserved just as it was, not so much as a speck of dust or fingerprint on the picture frames. But there is one addition.

On top of the piano sits the portrait of Aunty Kaye. It’s the one I couldn’t bear to look at after the accident, the one I’d turn face down when home alone. I lower myself on to the stool until our eyes are level. She looks so happy, so breezy. I smile back at her.

My hands relax over the keys. I first played it for her maybe five Christmases ago. She loved it so much that I gave her a performance of it every year from then on. With no conscious instruction from my brain, the opening chords of ‘Fairytale of New York’ ring out.

There will never come a time when I won’t miss her. But I know it now – how it is that I will keep her alive. I have to be the person that she believed I could be. If I live every day as that person then she will never die.

I close my eyes as I play. I think of Brighton. I picture a slightly older, infinitely cooler version of myself. A student down there, I imagine my early-morning walk to college through the Lanes. Reflected in shop windows, I see my old biker jacket and pork-pie hat. And, right behind me, I see Aunty Kaye.

I’ve thought about it a lot these last few weeks. I’ve wondered if I could make good on those plans the two of us made together. It seemed improbable.