We have a three-stop trip, Dad and I – Canada, Hawaii and San Francisco; Angela’s not doing the last leg. She’s going to fly home after our Hawaii stop, but Dad and I are going on. I’m going to see Janis Joplin’s house. Dad is going to walk down Lombard Street and eat at Bobo’s steakhouse. Angela has her own plans when she gets back to Warren and the girls. Mum called her while Dad and I were there. They spoke for a long time. Dad and I sat on the veranda not listening to them talk as we played Warren’s copy of The Who’s My Generation on his ancient stereo, but I talked briefly to Mum at the end of their conversation because Angela forced me. It went OK. I might pop into the travel agent’s when we eventually get home; I haven’t quite decided yet. I did something else while we were in Canada. I messaged Cherry Lau. Nothing dramatic, and we’re not going to be become best buddies again, or anything like that, or probably ever message each other again, but I told her I was really sorry for what I did back then – really truly sorry – and after three days she replied to me and said, ‘Thank you’, and I knew more than anyone that it wasn’t enough, really, my apology after all this time – nowhere near – but it was something.

‘Welcome to Hawaii.’

We’re on the tarmac now and the voice comes from somewhere under a huge swathe of pink and white leis. The person holding them is tiny and beautiful. She places a pink lei around Dad’s neck, on top of his The Jam T-shirt, and a white one around my neck. Angela gets a white one too.

‘Thank you,’ I say.

‘Thank you,’ say Dad and Angela.

‘I got you a hat.’ There’s a kiss on my left cheek, a tender arm snaked round my waist; leather wristbands tickling my hip bone under my white cotton shirt. Kemp, who has been trailing Angela and lugging her huge carrier bag of duty-free toiletries and magazines, is holding what looks suspiciously like another bloody fisherman’s hat and he plonks it on my head. ‘Let me take a photo,’ he says, laughing, and reaching in his cross-body camera bag for his prized Minolta. Kemp’s come with us on our trip – well, he’s flying on to Argentina, after Hawaii; he has another assignment. I asked him if he wanted to come, when Dad and I first decided on the trip, and he said ‘yes’. I’ve even let him take the occasional photo of me.

‘Cheese,’ I say, grinning like a loon. ‘I bet I look ridiculous.’