‘No I wasn’t!’ retorts Ryan, and I feel like Kemp wants to give him a comedy kick in the shins. I also feel this is a ruse for Kemp to see me again, but why? Why does he want to see me? I was just his friend and not a very good one, at that. Doesn’t he have anyone better?

‘Dad?’ I ask, hoping he’ll say ‘no’.

‘Fine with me,’ Dad says with a shrug.

‘Great!’

Kemp winks at me. I try to avoid his gaze. I don’t want him looking at me. I don’t want to keep seeing him. To be reminded that I loved him, but he couldn’t love me. That he would never look at a woman like me in the way a woman wants to be looked at by a man she has regretfully fallen for and never got over. The damn fool idiot.

Ryan winks too, surprisingly, although despite this copied trait of his uncle’s they look nothing alike – he is pale and placid-looking, with cropped blond hair and brown eyes. As he grins he shows sharpened teeth, like a cat’s.

‘Can you dust down your trousers a bit first, though?’ I ask Kemp.

He laughs again. ‘Yeah, sure. I’ve been underground.’

On the tube? I think. What’s he been doing down there? Lying in a siding? He slaps tanned hands, edged at the wrists with those leather bands, in a show of dusting down his thighs, then he and Ryan follow Dad and me up the clanking metal staircase.

I take them straight through to the sitting room. ‘Go wherever you like,’ I say to Ryan. ‘Take photos, whatever.’ He wanders off in the direction of the kitchen and the remaining three of us stand awkwardly. Eventually Dad goes to sit in his chair.

‘So,’ says Kemp. He has never been inside The Palladian before. He knocked one morning after I decided I couldn’t be friends with him any more – and had spent about a week ignoring his texts and phone calls. He knocked and I looked out of the window at him standing on the street below with his phone in his hand and I didn’t answer. Eventually he went away. ‘Lovely place,’ he says, looking around him. ‘Nice window,’ he adds, wandering over to the Palladian window and running his hand over the painted wood of the sill. Dad is already reaching for his headphones. ‘Hey, can I get a glass of water? I’ll help myself. Kitchen?’ He gestures, towards the door Ryan ambled through.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Live, laugh, bollocks?’ he whispers to me as he passes me, rubbing at the back of his head, and I blush.