The two tea chests, which I’d retrieved from my father’s house a few weeks after he died, remained resolutely sealed. The new tenants had found them in the loft and contacted me several times to pick them up and I’d finally arrived half-cut on a Saturday afternoon, just as they were about to be loaded into the back of a charity shop van. There followed a memorable (although much better forgotten) incident involving some bad language and even worse behaviour on my part, and I’ve tried very hard in the years since not to think about how mortified my father would have been.

I’d always planned to open them one day. I even made a half-hearted attempt once, but when I prised a lid up a few inches I saw layers of perfectly ironed sheets and towels, folded precisely into thirds. Mum’s calling card for her good linen. I realised instantly that when she died my father must have transferred all those John Lewis towels, hand towels, flannels and sheets from the airing cupboard into boxes to keep them pristine. All those years and Dad had never been able to bring himself to use the things Mum had been saving for ‘best’. It made me so sad to know my mum’s lovely linen never got to see the light of day, that the occasion for best had never come, I’d closed that box right back up again.

I’d carted those tea chests to, at last count, thirteen different bedsits, houses and flat-shares, and for all I knew someone could have ransacked them and replaced Mum’s good linen with Pot Noodles. I didn’t want to open them, but I also couldn’t quite leave them behind, so there they sat in Dom’s spare downstairs bedroom. Which was now, beyond any reasonable doubt it seemed, Lou’s room.

I was reasonably happy with my efforts until I went upstairs and saw what George had done with Wolfie’s room. The bed was made up (a little wonkily) with his second-favourite Buzz Lightyear duvet cover – the one with Woody from Toy Story – and set up with a carefully curated audience of soft toys. There was a pile of picture books on the bedside table and he’d even dragged in his special beanbag chair that nobody, bar him and Gentleman, had ever been allowed to sit on. The room was a six-year-old’s version of a mixtape and it was pretty bloody impressive. I was quite glad Lou couldn’t get up the stairs to see what she’d missed out on.

I don’t think Lou would have noticed if I’d short-sheeted her bed with a couple of slices of honey-smoked ham, though, because all she wanted was to get in it, pronto. When I finally managed to slip out of the front door, avoiding goodbyes and my mouth already watering at the thought of my first pint, I heard her apologetically telling Dom that she might have to lie down for a bit, if that was OK. I pulled the door shut as quietly as I could behind me and heard Dom unapologetically replying that she should make herself at home and do exactly as she wanted.