‘There are six floors and three atriums,’ says Dad. We are trailing from the lobby behind a group of Japanese tourists and a woman with an enormous bottom, who sways it side to side like a water buffalo. People bustle round us on all sides; some staring, some uninterested, some very obviously not staring. ‘All surrounded by smaller rooms. And I’m OK, Prue. I must have just got out of the wrong side of bed this morning. Check out the engraved pillars and the heraldic shields of Henry the Eighth’s wives, if you can find them. There are also carved animals hidden all about the store.’

‘OK, Dad.’

I look at him quizzically. He just looks sad today. I’ll buck up. I have to. If I buck up then hopefully he will, too.

‘Tell me the story,’ I attempt, as we tap our way through the food hall, me guiding Dad away from the glass jars of all sorts of delights, set on low benches. ‘Of when you came here as a kid.’

‘OK,’ says Dad. ‘First, take me to a pillar with the engraving on so I can feel it, please.’ I lead him over to a dark wood pillar, engraved with smooth, bulbous leaves, and I place his hand on it. ‘Ah, yes, beautiful work,’ he says. He glides his fingers over the leaves and down the pillar. Gives a sigh. I touch it, too, the glossy wood, here for over a hundred years. ‘Well, I came here with Nonna – we’d come to the wholesalers in Ganton Street and we wandered in here, in awe – and she kept saying she shouldn’t be in here, you know, that it was too smart, that she was just a contadina – a peasant.’ He smiles a little at the memory. ‘But she knew about the two ships, and the little windows between some of the wood panelling straight from the captain’s quarters, and how the whole store had been designed to feel like a home and, well, I was just fascinated. I started looking around me and I thought about the flow of people and the flow of rooms and that it was beautiful and practical and really said something.’ Dad is warming to his theme. I can see the small boy in him peering out, curious and excited about the world. I like that image. ‘And then, years later, I was doing carpentry at the Barbican, and it was so, so different, but each building I worked on served the architect’s vision of its purpose – the purpose of the people who would use it, you know?’

I nod. ‘John Harrison Burrows,’ I say.

‘Who?’