‘And you didn’t try again, after that? To come to The Palladian? To see Dad, or try to get addresses for us, although obviously I was there all along.’

‘I thought you were gone. I saw it as my punishment. I knew I didn’t deserve you. That I never had. I didn’t come back again. I continued with my life, what it was. It’s such a surprise to see you now. I never expected to.’

‘I was quite surprised, too,’ I say. ‘I walk past that travel agent’s all the time.’

‘I’m so sorry for everything.’

‘Sorry is just a word.’

She nods. ‘Can I explain myself?’ she says. She is fiddling with the sugar sachet; she has spilled some on the table but makes no attempt to clear it up and nor do I. ‘I presume that’s why you came to see me, why we’re here?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. I’m not sure I want an explanation; there’s nothing new to know, is there? My mother was a drug addict. ‘Well, we haven’t got long so make it potted. They’ll be needing you back.’ I look at my watch like a foreman of a factory.

‘Oh, it’s a short story,’ she says. Someone walks past us – a lady in a red mac, despite the weather, and in her downdraught I get a waft of the perfume I think Ellen is wearing. I know it, but at the same time I don’t. ‘I had to go; you know that, don’t you? I just had to. I was twenty-one; I’d had you when I was sixteen.’

‘Yes, it was very young,’ I say with a tight smile. ‘But it happens. And you were married. Things were stable. You had a good future with Dad and it was getting better. He was going to be an architect.’

‘I had to get married,’ says Ellen. ‘There was no choice in the matter. There was so much shame back then. There was no other course of action. Especially with our parents.’ She smiles at me but I can’t bring myself to return it.

‘I know all this,’ I say. ‘That you were just two kids who got yourselves in trouble and marriage was the only answer.’

‘Vince Alberta …’ she muses, and I feel like she has stepped out of the café and into her past. ‘He was certainly something else … sixteen, cocky as hell, a smile that could light up a school hall … I thought I loved him, I suppose, but who really loves anyone at sixteen? You’re more likely to love a pet rabbit or your favourite skirt.’

‘Or The Beatles.’

‘Or The Beatles.’ She gives me another smile I don’t mirror.