‘Yes.’ That biting at the lip again. The tapping of his cane. The rhythmic stepping of our feet. An elderly motorbike splutters past us, its driver in leather and goggles. ‘Your mother is not in Sweden.’

We break our step. Well, I stop, and because Dad is holding on to my elbow he has to stop too. ‘What? What do you mean she’s not in Sweden?’

A jogging man with headphones circles round us. ‘Pardon me,’ he says, American accent.

‘She’s in London. She never went to Sweden. She’s been here all along. Well, apart from that bloody hippy trip around Europe …’

‘I don’t understand. She didn’t go to Sweden? She just made that up?’

‘I made it up.’

‘Dad, you’ve lost me. You need to explain what you’re talking about.’

We have stopped dead on the bridge and are in the way of everyone. I steer Dad over to the railing again and this time I grip it tight, my knuckles whitening as they push against my skin.

Dad takes a breath. His eyes are still red-rimmed. ‘I couldn’t have her coming in and out of your lives like that, so infrequently. It just wasn’t fair.’

‘Go on …’

He sighs and rubs at his eyes. ‘I tracked her down, sometimes, in between those visits, to a squat or a horrible bedsit – she’d refuse to get her act together, refuse to come and see you. Other times I feared she was dead. You know, when your mother first left she told me she wanted some time off, to be free of everything, and I told her, yes, “go”. I said, “Do what you need to do.” I was young but I loved her so fiercely, so determinedly – determined that we were going to make it work, this marriage. I thought we’d be together for ever – how naïve was that? I thought this was a temporary wobble. Yes, she might need to do this – go away for a while – but then she would come back and everything would be all right.’

I had thought so too, hadn’t I?

‘Let’s walk again,’ I say, peeling my hands from the railing and letting Dad take my arm. I need to move, to be in motion, and there’s a gap in the stream of people ambling along the bridge. We set off, once more, our steps in sync.

‘So, I got the bus with her,’ resumes Dad, ‘helped her take some stuff to Janice’s, who was waiting for her with two bottles of beer and a cigarette. I never thought, when I dropped her off, that this was the beginning of her screwing up her life. Destroying part of yours. The drugs, calling herself Starflower …’

‘Starflower? I don’t remember that,’ I say.