I look at him, his hands moving over the album, feeling the edges of the photographs under their transparent film. We seek to hide things from our fathers, don’t we? We attempt to shield them from all those scrapes in the life of a daughter – the times we got so drunk we crawled up the road on our hands and knees; the time we called him from that phone box that was actually the bedsit of a man twenty years our senior; the dark things we are most ashamed of. It’s to mothers we tell those stories – sometimes – and her whisper of ‘We won’t tell your father about this’ is a hushed conspiracy between mother and daughter. Except my mother wasn’t there.

Here’s one of me and Cherry Lau, sitting on the step outside her parents’ Chinese takeaway. She had to work there after school. I’d go and help out, loll around behind the counter and be surly to customers. We used to have such a laugh.

‘Which one are you on now?’

‘Me and Cherry Lau, you know, who lived next door?’

‘Yes, I know,’ says Dad. ‘Sweet girl.’

She was a sweet girl. I feel so awful about how things ended with her. I mouth ‘sorry’ at the photo and turn to the next page, but it is empty. The last few blank pages of the album are stuck together in a clump, but there’s always a sliver of yellowing paper peeping out, just before the back cover, so I peel it free of the last page to expose the paper flap, secured with the string that winds round the little cardboard button, and the set of faded photographs inside.

‘The photos of you and Mum, before you had us,’ I whisper. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen them, but they always give me a jolt. They always make me feel stuff I really don’t want to feel.

‘Describe them,’ says Dad, his face impassive.

‘Well, there’s the one of you at Covent Garden, by the flower market. You both look so young.’ Sixteen, I think. Both my parents became parents at sixteen … ‘You have flares on, and Mum’s wearing the big T-shirt with a rainbow on it.’ I clear my throat and try to sound jolly.

‘Just before she had you,’ says Dad. ‘Best market in the world, back then,’ he adds, with a quick smile. ‘And we all loved the street performers, didn’t we? Do they still have them?’