I take off my headphones. I can hear grumble, grumble, clatter, clatter, from the kitchen; I can smell onions being sweated in olive oil and garlic; I can already taste the pancetta and the parmesan and the peppery, creamy sauce. I can also see exactly how the evening will pan out, just as it always does. Dad and I will have dinner, then retire to our chairs: me to browse the internet or watch TV or listen to not-loud-enough music; Dad to read on his Braille reader or listen to a podcast – always on architecture, a subject he has never stopped studying. The light will fade; we’ll stay in our chairs. We might have a snack, a glass of beer. At around eleven, Dad will say, ‘Well, I think I’ll turn in, Prue’, and I’ll say, ‘Me too, Dad’, and we’ll go to bed. Always the same, day after day, month after month, year after year. And that’s OK. We like it like this. We wouldn’t have it any other way. What other way is there, for Dad and me?

‘Fifteen minutes, Prue,’ says Dad.

‘Righto, Dad,’ I reply.

CHAPTER 3

‘Angela called,’ Dad yells from the kitchen twenty minutes later.

‘Oh? What did she have to say for herself?’ I try to make my voice sound bright and not at all like I’ve been asleep for the last quarter of an hour. It’s a shameful habit I have – nodding off during daylight hours – considering I don’t work or do anything all day. Dad naps a lot too. Our morning routine tends to be BBC Breakfast followed by The Wright Stuff followed by This Morning, then we stop for a bit of lunch – some ciabatta or pasta, a salad or some soup, depending on our mood or the season – then it’s the music or the podcasts or more television and two or three small afternoon naps each. We’re like a couple of bloody dormice. And if we’re a couple of dormice, then my sister Angela is an ant, or a busy busy worker bee – always working, always socializing, always shopping or baking, always doing something. My little sister (she’s forty-six) checks in with us from Canada every three months or so, not that she needs to; her life is on Facebook. Where she’s been, how work’s been, how well her perfect girls have done at school and nursery, what she had for dinner last night …

‘I didn’t answer,’ Dad calls. ‘I had my headphones on. She left a voicemail that she’d call back.’

‘Oh, OK.’

Angela is all Photoshop filters and clinking champagne glasses and beautiful local scenery and home-made cakes and gorgeous children and new shoes. We have absolutely nothing in common.

‘Maybe she’ll call back after dinner.’ Dad sounds about as enthusiastic as I feel.

‘Maybe,’ I say.