The waitress places it down in front of me and I mutter a thanks before I blow out the candle. Dad pats me on the back and Layla claps her hands.

‘Thank you for that complete embarrassment.’

‘Come on, it’s your birthday; we just wanted to make it special. You know it’s only a fraction of what your mum would have done,’ says Dad. ‘Jan always loved birthdays.’

My heart burns at the mention of Mum. He’s right though; she would have done something completely over the top. She would have filled the whole café with balloons and there would have been a cake the size of a table, and it certainly wouldn’t have had one solitary candle on top.

I can’t help but feel sad. My birthdays have never been the same since she died seventeen years ago. Each one serves as a painful reminder that she’s no longer here. I’ve almost reached the point now where I’ve celebrated more without her than I did with her.

Dad senses the shift in mood, and he puts his hand over mine. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to; his being here knowing how I’m feeling is good enough.

‘So how long have you got before you need to go?’ I say, trying not to slip down a melancholy rabbit hole.

Layla’s a governor at the school that her twin boys attend, and she’s roped Dad into doing a careers talk there this morning.

‘In about twenty minutes. You should come,’ says Layla.

‘Um, that’s OK. I thought I might just potter round and go to the shops.’

In truth, I hadn’t really thought about what I was going to do after I left them. It was a last-minute decision to take the day off, mainly motivated by the weird feeling I’ve had surrounding this birthday.

‘Why don’t you come with us?’ says Dad. ‘I feel like I haven’t seen you properly for ages. It would be nice to spend the morning together at least.’

‘Dad, we work together every day. We see plenty of each other.’

‘Yeah, but it’s different when we’re in the office. I just feel like we haven’t caught up a lot lately.’

I don’t want to point out that it’s his fault, so instead I take a bite of my croissant. He’s always busy with Julie, the woman he’s started dating.

‘You know I don’t really like those kinds of events, I’m never very good at answering questions on the spot.’

‘It’s not like you’ll have to say anything, just come and watch my talk.’

‘The boys would love to see you to wish you happy birthday,’ says Layla.