‘I haven’t been here for a long time,’ says Dad, as I tell him we have reached the house. We are now crunching on gravel the colour of pearls. ‘About forty years, I think.’

‘Yep,’ I say. ‘I reckon you last brought Angela and me here when I was eight or nine.’

‘And has it changed?’

‘Not a jot.’

I describe the huge white Georgian house to him, with the pillars and the porch and the massive windows with their tiny panes Angela and I used to peer into. Its roof and its gables. How the expansive lawn rolls from the house, a green carpet, down to the large pond where Angela and I once trailed our fingers in the water and fed the ducks. How the good people of London are again on tartan waterproof-backed blankets, with their picnics and their snacks: families gathered to loll and laugh; couples entwined on the grass, a tangle of limbs and phones in back pockets and headphones and half-drunk bottles of water.

‘Family, love and food,’ says Dad. ‘A great combination.’

‘Yes,’ I agree.

‘And has it changed since we were here last, Bertie?’ asks Kemp.

My heart stops. Just for a second. I hoped he wasn’t going to bring it up. I hoped he wasn’t going to say anything. But he has. Why wouldn’t he? It’s a night that means absolutely nothing to him, apart from a good laugh he once had, with a friend. A night about a million years ago.

‘Remember how we climbed the wall, in the moonlight? Broke in? Walked up to the house?’

‘We were really drunk,’ I say, ‘so not really.’

I look away from him, away from the house we sat in front of that night – as my heart broke into its final pieces – and down to the pond, where a man is having his photo taken with a gaggle of ducks. Of course, I remember everything about that night. Every tiny detail. We were in the King’s Arms, as usual, when Kemp suddenly cried, ‘Hey, let’s get the bus to Hampstead Heath! It’s Bonfire Night, isn’t it? There’ll be fireworks.’ And I immediately got my coat from the back of my chair, as I would have gone anywhere with him. We ran up the street to the bus stop and waited ages for the bus and by the time we got to Hampstead Heath the fireworks had finished but Kemp declared he wanted to look at Kenwood House, in the moonlight, so we climbed the gate – very clumsily – and infiltrated the grounds, and made our way up the deserted winding paths to the house while Kemp told me elaborate ghost stories that became so funny and preposterous they ended with us both crying with laughter and shushing each other as the steam of our breath escaped into the cold night air.

‘You must remember,’ says Kemp, throwing me an odd look.