‘He’s as obsequious as Uriah Heep. Cold, with it. He’s a performer, Prue, and I’m not sure what this particular performance is all about. With you.’

‘Right.’

‘I’m just telling you how I see it …’

‘Right. Er … weren’t you the one telling me to go looking for love, to open my eyes to it?’

Dad sighs. ‘Look, everyone knows if you’re blind the other senses get sharpened. Isn’t that the kind of bollocks everyone spouts? Well, I can smell this bloke is a bullshitter, and I can suss a patronizer at fifty paces. I just don’t like him, Prue, especially when you compare him to Kemp.’

‘I don’t want to compare him to Kemp!’ I retort. ‘Salvi is … more complex.’

‘Complex is often shorthand for “arsehole”.’

‘Dad!’

‘I’m being serious. I think he’s a wrong’un.’

‘Now you sound like a weird cockney. Let’s just agree to disagree, shall we? After all, you’ve met him for – what? – two minutes, and I’ve had four whole dates.’ Four dates and what do I really know about him? Is Dad right? Is Salvi the worst kind of complicated? The hurting kind?

‘If he’s telling you who he is – listen. If he’s showing you who he is – see it.’

‘Maybe it’s too late,’ I mutter.

‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing, Dad, nothing.’

We’re almost home. I get the keys out of my bag ready to unlock the double brown doors.

‘Come on, then,’ I say, helping Dad over the threshold.

‘Cup of tea and a KitKat?’

‘You know me so well, Dad.’ Yes, I think, Dad knows me well, but he can’t know everything. He can’t know my heart – what’s really, truly inside it. He doesn’t know that Salvi is supposed to save me. He doesn’t know my secrets. He doesn’t know the things I yearn for in the present to erase the past.

Because I have never told him.

CHAPTER 39

‘How’s tricks?’ Angela asks, at nine o’clock five evenings later, when she calls again. Dad and I have eaten and I was just about to settle down with a blog article about Eva Peron, some Alanis Morissette and my misery.

‘I don’t have any tricks,’ I say. Why on earth is she calling again?

‘You know what I mean. What’s new?’

‘We went to see Blondie,’ I say flatly. I am absent-mindedly scrolling down Alanis’s tracks on my phone to find the most soul-scouring.

‘Who did?’

‘Me and Dad and a couple of friends.’

‘Dad went to a concert? And with what friends?’

‘Just a couple of people I’ve met.’ I’m not telling her about Salvi – it’s been five whole days and he still hasn’t called. Five days of phone-checking and teeth-gnashing and disenchantment – and I never told her about Kemp.

‘What did you wear?’

‘Clothes.’