A pot of congealed stew sits on the stove; beyond being unhygienic and an attractive proposition for flies, it’s now just a cold, hard, flavourless lump. The last meal he ever cooked for himself. The cooker’s four-eyed face is covered with grease. The garden is a nature reserve for foxes and rats, which are the subject of complaints by the neighbours to the council, which issues threats, which he ignores.

‘Hi, it’s only me. It’s Stanley,’ I call out with enforced cheerfulness, letting him know he can drop the hammer that he’s just picked up, that he’s slept with for decades in case the robbers he’s been expecting finally do break in. I step on to the local free newspapers, which I push to one side with my feet, aware that whatever state my father is in, his hearing is unimpaired and a row will ensue if he hears me moving things about. Nothing is to be touched, not even the stew, which is still good enough to be eaten one day, Mi na wasteful like you perishin’ youngsters with yer cash an’ carry, easy come easy trowaway ways.

He sits in a brown tweed armchair, where he also sleeps. He hasn’t gone upstairs for years, and, although I bought a single bed for the sitting room, he doesn’t use it. This is where he sits all day, watching the television but not taking anything in any more. The world in colourful miniature, reduced to a murmuring visual backdrop in a corner of the room: the cookery programmes and soaps, the quiz shows and chat shows, films from Hollywood, Ealing Studios, Bollywood, the make-over, managing-your-money, managing-your-mind, managing-your-relationships, managing-your-every-damned-ting-shows. Once they were a point of conversation. Now it’s just company that he ignores. He gets up only to let in Kathy from Meals-on-Wheels, who brings him a hot lunch at midday with a cold supper for later, which he barely touches; Raj from the off licence, who personally delivers his supplies of whisky, beer, cigarettes and chocolate; and the home help, Winnifred, whom I pay to clean up a little, but, unable to do much of this, and old enough and kind enough to humour the old man whose suspicious eyes follow her every move, she at least keeps an eye on him every Wednesday.

I walk with caution as I enter the sitting room, seeing first the commode that is only a few feet from him, and even then sometimes too far away. The gas fire is on. Winter. Summer. Spring. The windows are never opened. It’s beyond being stuffy. It’s an inferno.

He sits behind the door.

I feel the squelch of piss beneath my feet.

I sit down on the bed, which runs along the right-hand wall, placing a newspaper over it first.

‘How are you?’ Of course this is the most ridiculous question of all, but I can’t help myself.