‘I would. You took your chance and you escaped it all,’ I say. ‘Dad, us. You became a hippy bumming round Europe, and then a druggie in London. It was hardly better than what you had, was it?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘I’ve wasted a huge part of my life. Whatever reasons I give doesn’t excuse that I have behaved terribly and lost everything. That I have been despicable.’

I drum my fingers on the Formica, pull a virgin napkin over a tea stain. ‘Hey, if only Dad had gone blind earlier,’ I add sarcastically, ‘then you both could have suffered together and everything would have been all right.’

‘I’m so sorry Vince is blind,’ she says. ‘But I would never have escaped how he saw me. The disappointment from him, that was always there. When I took drugs … well … I was part of something. I felt I belonged. No one was ever disappointed with me.’

‘That’s because everyone was always off their faces!’

She laughs and I remember that laugh. From long ago. But I think about what she’s saying – that Dad was disappointed in her. He had told me he loved her fiercely, that he was determined to make the marriage work. Did she view that ferocity as a directive for her to do better, to be better? To not struggle or be flighty? That she was a kind of enforced and failing work-in-progress for him?

‘Yes, there is that.’ She turns her untouched teacup in its saucer and I fear I might suddenly feel sorry for her because I understand. I understand that how you perceive people looking at you – looking at you in a certain way – can destroy you. ‘Maybe if I’d been older, I would have worked out a way to deal with that disappointment, or to change things in my own life, but that disappointment destroyed me.’

‘So it was never my face?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘My face? Was part of you leaving ever because of my face?’ I fear I might cry and I absolutely must not. I must not cry in front of this woman. I have not cried for her for forty-three years and I’m not about to start now.

‘Of course not!’ She looks shocked. ‘I loved your face. I’ve missed your face. I’ve missed both your faces. You were both amazing girls. Amazing girls.’ I swallow down my tears and place both hands flat on the table, to steady myself. ‘It was a pity I only ever had it in me to be the opposite of anything even close to amazing.’