‘Maybe she spared you that bit …’ He turns his head and smiles at me, and I try to smile back. ‘In nineteen eighty-four I found her in another grotty dosshouse and I told her I couldn’t have it any more, you girls waiting and hoping and wondering, and that she must come and see you and tell you both she was moving to Sweden.’

‘Choose Life,’ I whisper to myself. ‘And of course we believed her.’

‘I was so angry with her!’ cries Dad. ‘I said, “I don’t want them looking for you on every street corner, thinking they see you getting on every bus, or going into a shop. Thinking you’re going to turn up on the doorstep.”’ He sighs. ‘I wanted you to think she was far away so there was no hope, Prue. You and Angela. Because it’s the hope that kills you.’

One foot is going in front of the other. Dad and I are still in step. I wonder if the hope had killed him, in the early days after Mum left. Each time she didn’t turn up. Every time he tracked her down to another dosshouse. All the times he missed her and had to be everything to us, because she was gone. ‘All this time,’ I say. ‘All these years and she was in London!’

‘Yes. Look, I’m telling you this now because I don’t want Angela to carry on trying to find her. Ringing the consulate, emailing places in Sweden … hurt by the disappointment when her mother doesn’t reply … I don’t want you hurt. I don’t want you hurt ever again.’

I’ve stopped walking again. He was hurt; we’ve all been hurt. My mother is in London and has been here all along. I’m not sure where to insert this information in my life, where it slots. Does it make any difference? Does it make any difference that she was in the same city as us rather than one thousands of miles away? That she was shooting up in a grimy bedsit in London instead of a skinny Stockholm townhouse with a snowy front step? That she will grow old under London’s streetlights and not beneath Sweden’s midnight sun? I feel unsteady, and that the bridge under my feet may collapse at any minute.

‘Are you OK?’ says Dad.

‘Yes,’ I fib. ‘I’m OK. Thank you for telling me. And thank you for the lie.’ I’m trying to stay upright, on this bridge. I’m trying not to crash. ‘I know you were only trying to protect us.’

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you from everything,’ replies Dad, tears in his eyes. ‘Everything that’s ever happened to you. I’m so so sorry.’