The chef tucks her hands in the front pocket of her apron. ‘I can take you to our herb garden, when you’ve finished eating, and talk you through what we grow here, if you’d like.’

‘I’m blind,’ says Dad. ‘And do you have the time?’

‘I thought you might be,’ she replies. ‘And, yes I do, I’m on my break in twenty minutes.’

‘I’d love to,’ says Dad.

Kemp and I raise eyebrows at each other. Dad is saying ‘yes’, I think, yes to opportunities. He’s giving me an out-and-out demonstration.

‘Perfetto. Then I’ll be back.’

And twenty minutes later she is, sans apron, and with a, ‘Shall we?’ Dad gets up from the table.

‘I’ll need to hold on to your arm,’ he says.

‘Absolutely fine,’ says the woman, and Dad takes her arm and they wander out of the courtyard and in the direction of Kenwood House’s kitchen gardens.

‘Well, look at that,’ remarks Kemp. ‘Your dad’s on a herby date.’

‘It looks that way,’ I laugh. I am quite astonished, really. Off he’s gone, just like that. ‘Funny the things people are interested in,’ I add. ‘I wouldn’t know a basil from a brush.’

Kemp laughs too, and I realize we’re sitting in the same positions we used to sit at, at our table in the pub. Except now we have tea not Jack Daniel’s and Coke and I don’t have a beer mat to tear to pieces, so I work on a napkin in between sipping at my tea and stabbing my finger at the remaining crumbs of my cake.

‘Here, put your sunglasses on, Ted.’

There’s an elderly couple at the next table. The man – white-haired and frail-looking – is blinking in the sunlight; the woman – soft platinum hair and pale eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses – rummages in her bag and tenderly places a pair of sunglasses on the old man’s face, pushing them up his nose until they are in the right position.

‘There,’ she says.

‘Thank you, Annie,’ he replies. I watch as she cuts his piece of cake into neat slices and pushes the plate closer to him. He smiles at her. She winks back at him and says, ‘It’s a lovely sponge. Try some.’ I glance at Kemp and he is looking at them too.

‘I’d like to be like that, one day,’ he says.

‘What, not losing your sunglasses because someone else always has them in her bag?’

‘No, well, yes – but no, in a couple like that. Look at how in love they are.’