He catches up with me. ‘God, you’re infuriating. I love you. I love you. You’re home for me, Prue. And not because I’m getting old and want to bloody settle for anyone I can just grab to grow old with. Or because I want – or ever wanted – some friends-with-benefits, unsatisfactory, shallow, surface bollocks. I called the world home for many years; it was what I wanted. Until you. You’re home for me because you’re the person I want to come home to, from my trips. I want to turn the key in the door – any door – and have you there … or be waiting when you turn the key and come in; it doesn’t matter which way round it is. I want to take you with me when I do go away, if you’d like to. I want a life with you. I want to wake up with you in the morning and have you irritating me at night and it to just go on, until almost for ever. I want to grow old with you, Bertie! I want your sock back in my bloody sock drawer!’ I realize we have come to a stop again, somehow. That I am just staring at him, here in the hot sun, out on the streets of London. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying? Are you listening to me?’

Of course I’m not. I feel like I can’t even see him. The sun is in my eyes and the thought that my mother is a few miles down the road is a bloated poisonous mushroom filling every corner of my brain. I don’t have room for this. Not right now. ‘No,’ I say.

Kemp shakes his head. ‘Come on, Prue. It’s you. It’s just you. Every time I look at you, I just think, Yeah. Her.’

‘I’ve got a date tonight. You’re too late,’ I say. I don’t want to believe him. I don’t want to believe a word of it. I don’t want to be almost crying and willing, willing my tears to dissolve before they fall down my face.

‘He’s not right for you, that Salvi. I know from the way he looks at you, Prue.’ Kemp takes both my hands and holds them fast. ‘Look, ever since I met you, you’ve been wearing a mask. And I don’t mean the make-up – don’t look at me like that! – you know I’ve never had any issue with your birthmark – and don’t ever mention paper bags again, do you hear me? The mask you’ve been wearing is that bullshit mask you put on every day that says, “Keep your distance from me; don’t touch me, don’t love me.”’