The accident was such a blow after everything my father had done to turn his life around. He became a parent at sixteen; for some that would have been game over, but Dad, who left school to become a carpenter not long after I was born, got what he termed a ‘fire in his belly’ for architecture while working on early development of the Barbican. He took his A levels at night school and got into University College London on a scholarship. He caught the bus from our little house in Clerkenwell to Russell Square every morning. He studied every night. With Nonna and Papa doing the school runs and looking after us after school – Nonna making us cannoli and Bolognese and focaccia, and Papa entertaining us with his sleight-of-hand magic tricks and his false tooth that he would pop out into his hand whenever he felt like it. Dad continued with the degree and he became an architect. For a while.

‘No, drop it, Prue. It’s utterly ridiculous.’

‘OK, Dad, subject dropped.’

We eat in silence for a few seconds. I don’t really have a leg to stand on anyway, I think. I’m hardly out there setting the world alight and I’m not even blind. I silently thank Dad for not pointing this out.

As usual, after dinner, Dad stays at the table while I clear the plates and take them to the kitchen. After I’ve washed up and dried up, with one of Nonna’s old red gingham tea towels, and put everything away and tidied up the kitchen, which Dad has left pretty spotless anyway, Dad will be back in his chair again and I will take to mine. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I were to sit in his chair, or he in mine? Spontaneous combustion, probably, leaving just our feet on the floor, in front of those chairs.

I return to the comfort of Bonnie Raitt and my phone. There’s more news now on Warren Street. ‘Breaking News’, they call it, which is so ubiquitous a phrase now it carries a degree of anticipation not always rewarded, but it doesn’t say much more.

British Transport Police say the woman, who has not yet been named, was in her twenties and worked in the entertainment industry.