I can’t help but laugh and so does Kemp. A woman in front of us in the queue turns round and smiles at us. ‘Well, I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm for you to sit at the mouth of the entrance,’ Kemp says finally. ‘If Prue thinks it’s all right for you to come on a trip with me.’

‘Prue is not my bloody keeper!’ exclaims Dad. ‘If I want to go, I’ll go!’

‘All right, Dad,’ I joke. ‘Don’t forget who’s been guiding you all round London! Be careful, or I could start describing things to you that aren’t there again, like I did when I was a kid … Oh look, there’s a pink dinosaur!’

‘Very funny.’

‘Well,’ says Kemp, ‘what do you think, Prue?’

‘As Dad’s keeper I suppose it would be OK,’ I say. I make sure to give Kemp a look that says, I still hate you.

‘All right, then, you’re on, Vince. I’ll take you to Hornsey Wood. But you can’t mess about.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ says Dad cheekily. ‘That’s settled, then.’

I shake my head. ‘Such a sucker for Victorian architecture,’ I say.

Kemp raises his eyebrows at me and smiles. I raise mine back at him and resist the urge to stick out my tongue. We move slowly forward in the queue, and the lowering sun continues its warm swansong over the buildings of London.

CHAPTER 37

‘Bloody brilliant. Bloody, bloody brilliant.’

The beautiful thing about my dad being at the Roundhouse tonight is that, for him – apart from all the subsequent records they’ve released since then, of course – it could still be 1978. Dad is here. Blondie is here. The sublime Deborah Harry, rocking a red cold-shoulder dress with a low-slung wide belt and a whole lot of attitude – is here. And the crowd is loving it. The atmosphere is so electric and the music is so blisteringly loud, it courses through us like liquid nitrogen. The floor is jumping and that conical roof is being raised to the heavens by transcendent punky pop. We are here, at last, and it is magical.

There was a slight wobble as we came in, when Dad was momentarily daunted at the noise, at the moving body of people. He hesitated at the threshold of the main auditorium. I could see his hand was shaking slightly on his cane, but ‘Let’s do this,’ he muttered, and now – now – he is dancing, actually dancing. We’re standing by a pillar and Dad’s cane is leaning against it unattended, and he is dancing to ‘Atomic’ and singing along with great and unadulterated gusto. Who knew? Who knew Dad would ever enjoy music again, let alone dance? I can’t stop looking at him. I can’t stop looking at my dad dancing.