He means the women I like reading about. Talented women, heroic women, pioneering women; women nothing like me … Recently I’ve been reading a lot about Amelia Earhart, Indira Gandhi and Dian Fossey. Most of yesterday afternoon was spent down a Catherine the Great-shaped rabbit hole. Dad likes the fact that I can occupy myself without bothering him. I don’t talk to him beyond the necessary: ‘What are we having for dinner tonight?’, ‘I’m doing the online shop; do you still like apple juice?’, ‘Can I help with that, Dad? No? OK.’ I eat quietly, looking through Facebook on my phone in silence. I’m not really on Facebook – I have an account with about ten ‘friends’ that I never post on, but I use it to stalk abusers I knew at school and scoff at my sister. At any other point in time, I’m either watching telly or listening to music through headphones, the volume as low as I can bear it. Anything else I fear he views as some kind of attention-seeking. Obviously I am seeking his attention. There’s nobody else bloody here.

I open the second letter: an A4 envelope. I’m not particularly intrigued; it’s probably another brochure from a local estate agent with an accompanying missive trying to persuade us to sell our flat. Oh. Inside is a very belated 2018 calendar from Gourmet Burgers for Dogs with a Great Dane demolishing a quarter-pounder on the cover. I used to work at Gourmet Burgers for Dogs, until I resigned from packing vacuum-packed home-made burgers for dogs into cardboard boxes, at age forty-five. Actually, I resigned from all jobs at that point. The burgers simply pushed me over an edge I’d been teetering near for a while.

I flick through the calendar; September looks cute.

There is a clatter from the kitchen.

‘Can I help?’

‘No, I’m all right!’

I can hear Dad counting the steps to the fridge under his breath. I put the calendar back in the envelope. God knows why they keep on sending me the things – I really don’t need a reminder of how my far-from-illustrious working life finally came to an end.

‘Oh, bugger it!’

‘Shall I come in?’

‘No, no, I’m fine.’

I put A Place in the Sun on. Plug in my headphones. Watch lucky people browsing beachfront properties in Barbados. I tell myself I’m Dad’s companion now, that I need to be here – not working – but we both know that’s not true. I just haven’t got the will or the confidence to put myself out there any more. Still, we’re all right for money as I’ve always saved hard, in all my jobs, even though I now do nothing at all, and Dad has his compensation pay-out and his handful of investments – and we’ve no mortgage – so we’re ticking over, ‘like a clapped-out Ford Cortina’, as he puts it.