‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Dad’s frown is back. I don’t know if he’s sorry about Mum not getting in touch, or that Angela is going to continue to try. The baby glides past us up the bridge in her red cocoon, waving a pudgy pink foot at me. Dad returns to my side and we fall into step. He sighs again. ‘I just wanted to keep you girls close to me, you know,’ he says. ‘Safe. Protected. Because in the end you were all I ever needed. And I ended up driving you both away.’

‘I didn’t go away, Dad! I’ve always been here.’

‘You did go away, Prue! And so did I. Even though we’ve sat in that same room together, year after year, the space between us could not have been wider. We closed off from each other and the world, you know we did!’

‘I know,’ I agree. ‘I know.’ That wide space. Between us. Between Angela and us. The things we should have said. The secrets we could have told. And I was not safe; I was not protected. But he never knew.

A boat clanks under the bridge. Its horn sounds. A child stops on the bridge and waves at it happily. Life on the river goes on. Life in London goes on. The world keeps spinning round and all my secrets stay hidden, unless I decide it’s time.

I look at Dad. At his face, with a thousand different emotions flickering across it. I want to be in the same room as him, father and daughter, and not two strangers, who were never brave enough to tell their stories. He has told me some of his, while we’ve been out this summer, walking around London. I have told him nothing of mine.

I think it might be time. I don’t want there to be a wide blank space between my father and me. I don’t want there to be long-kept secrets. I would like to tell him my truth, like Angela has finally done. I would like to tell him who I am.

‘I want to tell you something, Dad,’ I say. ‘Two things, actually.’

Our feet are walking in time, not enough to make the bridge wobble but I do feel wobbly.

‘Go on,’ says Dad.

‘It’s bad things. And the first thing brought about the second thing, I believe. It brought everything since.’

‘I’m a little confused, but I can take it.’ Dad looks uneasy, concerned. ‘Go on, love.’

I take a deep breath. Then another one. Dad waits. ‘OK. Firstly, when I was fourteen, a man working at Finsbury Park fair … abused me.’ The words rush out of me, a torrent. ‘He … he grabbed me where he shouldn’t have done and he pinned me to a generator and didn’t let me go. You were there, Dad. You came round to look for me.’