There’s something monstrous about Dad’s statement and I don’t feel like I can even process it right now. One of the old men gets up and shuffles a black pawn over to a white square and then sits back down. The two chess players contemplate the pieces.

‘We should tell Luca to come here,’ I say, trying not to think about Ruby-May. ‘He told me he goes to one of the cafes off Queen’s Square in Bristol. He plays chess with a group of old men who are there every day. It reminds him of home, but he says he misses the giant sets like this one.’ The other man now gets up and pushes a rook across the stone slabs. ‘Luca says you think about chess differently when the pieces are so large; it’s as if your brain is wired to respond like it’s real and no longer a game.’

My father ignores me. ‘She even says I was drunk.’

I don’t say anything. Dad spent much of my childhood in an alcoholic stupor, as far as I can remember. Although he wasn’t there for more than half the time – he stayed in his flat in Bristol during the week, instead of coming home to us. It’s probably why Mum walked out.

He looks at me from beneath his thick, wiry eyebrows. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Son, but I stopped a couple of years ago when the doctor put me on Warfarin. You can’t drink when you’re on blood-thinning medication. I thought he was being a scaremonger, and I had a pint in the pub and passed out. Cracked my head on the hearth.’

‘But Amy told me—’

‘I know what she said,’ he mutters. He pushes his focaccia aside, his appetite gone.

I think back to that day when I’d arrived so catastrophically late. Dad had been groggy, spaced out, and I’d believed them when Bethany and Amy had told me that he’d had more than half a bottle of red that afternoon, leaving Ruby-May on her own in the garden. Maybe he didn’t even remember drinking. He has been confused and forgetful since we arrived in Italy, and yet, in everyday conversations like this, he seems his old self: razorsharp and acerbic.

He puts down his empty coffee cup and stares at me. His eyes are paler than they used to be, but clear, unclouded.

‘I know you’re angry with me, Son, and you may very well not have forgiven me. I am sorry for how I behaved to you and your mother. I should have said so many years ago, and I’m sorry about that too. But there is nothing wrong with my mind.’

I drink my beer and look up into the clear, blue sky. There are two parallel white lines marring its perfect clarity: the past trajectories of planes, or the trajectories of past planes?