Dad and I sit in silence. Dusk falls. It will be bedtime soon. He spoke to Angela for half an hour. There was a little laughter. Dad cracked a couple of jokes. I’m still digesting everything she said to me. How she had no choice but to go, as life was darker than night. How all her hopes about Mum were seemingly extinguished, yet she still has reserves for more, all these years later. I thought I knew my sister so well but now it feels as though I have never seen her clearly at all. I need to re-shape her, in my mind. Adjust my view. She has appeared as many things to me over the decades: sunny playmate and surly teenager; arch deserter and selfish escapee; irritating Tiger Mom and boastful Canadian wife … But perhaps all along she was just my sister. And she was hurting, like I was, though I was too blind and wrapped up in myself to see it. We were all hurting. And she missed me.

A man out on the street calls for ‘Dasheep’ but it sounds like Dasheep is not going to show up. There’s the slam of a door, a blast of heavy rap music from a car whizzing past, a fox knocking over a wheelie bin: the sounds of the streets of London. My lullaby – now accompanied by the strange and new sensation of me missing Angela.

I get Dad a beer. I sip at mine. At twenty past ten the doorbell goes.

‘Who on earth’s that?’ asks Dad. We are about to start on some honey-roast peanuts.

‘God knows,’ I say, but my heart is suddenly thumping in my chest and hoping against hope that it’s Salvi. That he is at my door, as laid-back and unrepentant as ever and ready to sweep away the ignored-presumed-dumped melancholy he so casually unloaded on me.

‘Prue, hi.’ He’s leaning casually on the door frame, one elbow propped against it. Sometimes you get what you wish for. ‘I wanted to see if you were free on Saturday night.’

Salvi stares from my face to my chest, to my face again. No mention of him running out on me at the end of Blondie. The radio silence. He couldn’t look more relaxed, while I am ramrod straight, heart yammering. Fingers rigid on the other side of the door frame.