I have not been a good girl to my dad. I have let him down. I have sat with him in that flat year after year, indulging him in his isolation, being glad of it so I could wallow there, too, in mine. I have let him fade, as I have faded. I have let him disappear, as I wanted to disappear. Even when I worked, when I was a reluctant part of the world, I made no effort to bring Dad out of the flat and out of himself – I made no roads to try to encourage an embrace of the world, or this life, from either of us.

I’ve had a lacklustre career, which stalled. I’ve not fulfilled any kind of potential because there was never any there. I’ve painted but not let anyone see. I’m a purposely blank canvas I have let other people write on. I’ve not been a good girl since that first secret – the night at Finsbury Park, when I was fourteen and so desperate to be wanted by someone, to be looked at for the right reasons, that I let a bad thing happen. A bad thing that became a catalyst for so many other things in my life and the reason I was marked out to Jonas, in Tenerife: an easy target.

On screen, the Californian architect is now showing us around his sprawling home. He has floor-to-ceiling glass everywhere. He has light and tranquillity. He is introducing his Sound Room. He talks about something called The Golden Ratio.

My tears continue to fall. A long time ago, Kemp came into my life and unwittingly showed me what love was, and it was a pretty picture laid out on a piece of cartridge paper – beautiful, but not to be touched, and, like a painting, one-sided. It was never something for me. Love was never something that could be returned. Until Salvi … maybe. Successful, charismatic Salvi. And now I am a bad girl – again – because I have offered it to him on a plate and he has said ‘no’.

And Kemp wants me for one thing and not everything, like I wanted of him.

That bad thing. That first bad thing, that first bad night. I can’t escape it. I can’t ever get away from it. I invited that bad thing in, when I was fourteen. I asked for it, didn’t I? I’m a good girl gone bad who bad things happen to and I deserve them.

I don’t want to remember it now – that encounter, that night – as tears pitch down my face, unchecked. I don’t want to remember. But as I close my eyes I am back there. I am back there, that summer’s evening, and I can taste the candyfloss on my lips and smell the kerosene and the danger.

CHAPTER 34

Summer 1984

‘All right, Roo?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Where first?’

‘Waltzer?’