He nodded. He looked at me for a few seconds and then it seemed he might be about to say something else, but instead he turned and looked out over the darkness, beer in hand, dreaming of those places, I assumed; dreaming of the adventures he’d have. I stared and stared at the side of his face. I couldn’t bear that he was going away again, without a care. Not missing me. Not wanting me. Not counting the days until he saw me again, like I did with him. I couldn’t bear that I could only ever be his friend. Someone for jokes, and ghost stories, and drinks in the pub. Someone for everything but love.

I wanted and I wanted and I wanted to take that glorious, miraculous, warm and lovely face in my hands and kiss him and tell him I loved him. Instead, I just said, ‘Kemp,’ and he turned to me with a smile and said, ‘What?’ and I said, ‘I’m cold, shall we go back now?’

I wasn’t cold. I was burning inside, with the pain of a love that couldn’t be returned, and I knew I couldn’t go on feeling it. Not any more.

Dad’s hand is tugging on my arm slightly. His right foot crunches on the gravel. ‘Shall we go in the house now?’ he asks.

‘Yes, Dad.’

The three of us step into the entrance hall, where it is cool and smells of old houses, a smell Dad breathes in deeply as we go through the door and I pretend to do the same, but really I am taking a deep breath of relief. There are no memories in here, apart from the ones of Angela and I tearing through these rooms, giggling and excited (well, she was tearing; I was just in the slipstream), and staring, bored, at paintings and clomp-clomp-clomping in our sandals on the oak staircase, because it sounded nice and it was fun. There is no Kemp in here.

I spot a tactile map of the house on the wall, which I manoeuvre Dad to, and he runs his hand over it.

‘Robert Adam designed much of Kenwood House,’ he says. ‘It was built in the seventeenth century and served as a residence for the Earls of Mansfield through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It’s kept today in its original condition, exactly like a house, for people to walk freely through and experience – a house with many priceless old masters and landscapes hanging on its walls, of course.’

It’s just how I remember it: the wooden floors, the gorgeous winding staircases with their great acoustics, the richly patterned rugs, those imposing old masters. We start to make our way round. Dad and I lead; Kemp follows. There’s a Braille guide in each room. Dad is impressed.