‘Yeah, I like to think so.’ I ignore Kemp’s inflection, keep my eye on the road ahead. ‘My last trip was to America,’ he continues, as we walk. ‘To the wind farms of Arizona. It was really quite beautiful.’

‘I know,’ I admit. ‘I saw the pictures.’

‘She subscribes,’ says Dad, and I want to dig him in the ribs, though I should never have said anything in the first place. Do I really want to confess to Kemp that I’ve been obsessing over his work for the past seven years?

‘To National Geographic? That’s cool.’

Oh God, I’m obsessing now about whether he’s wondering where I keep them all. He wouldn’t have seen them in the sitting room or the hall or the kitchen of The Palladian, when he and Ryan visited, because I keep them in stacks under my bed, like a love-struck teenager hoarding every copy of Smash Hits with Adam Ant on the cover.

‘I’ve always been interested in wildlife and remote tribes,’ I say breezily. ‘I just never told you.’

‘Right. Well, brilliant,’ says Kemp, looking at me oddly. I see his odd look and I raise him an arched eyebrow. He counters it with an exaggeratedly furrowed brow, which can’t help but make me laugh, then starts talking animatedly to Dad about the wind farms of Arizona and how he had the best hamburger ever in a little shack of a restaurant just outside Phoenix …

We finally get to Hampstead, then Hampstead Lane, and turn into the stone gateway for Kenwood House. It’s a relief to get out of the sun and on to the wide shady paths of the grounds. It’s a relief to be nearly there. Walking the streets of North London with a smiley bouncy Tigger you’ve always hidden your feelings from has been a bit of a challenge. I concentrated on Salvi, in the end. Re-conjured the feeling when he gazed upon me like a precious doll. Wondered if I would ever get to sleep with him. It helped me not to stare at Kemp’s beard and despair at how handsome it makes him look. It helped me not to remember.

It’s busy in the grounds of Kenwood House. There are families, and joggers – both lone and in packs – and couples young and old, strolling and pushing buggies and children running ahead of their parents, in shorts and sandals and T-shirts, tripping over, and blowing bubbles from those plastic tubes, and everybody looks content, or happy, even. They are enjoying a nice day out, in the summer sun. They are at leisure. At ease. They are making the most of the long hot summer because this is England and, like Dad says, who knows when we’ll get one like this again?