‘I’m sure they do,’ I say. I stare at Mum’s face in this photo: so smiley, so full of fun, so alien. Her body, so full of me. The mound of me – not knowing how it would all turn out – is straining at the rainbow T-shirt, ready to burst forth. There’s a general otherworldliness to these photos, I think. An unlikelihood. ‘OK, here you are by the jeans stall in Camden, with the sign for the lock in the background,’ I continue, my voice purposely light. ‘You’re both laughing and Mum has a feather in her hair.’

‘I remember that.’

‘And here you are on your wedding day.’

I remember this photo well. I remember how it makes my breath catch in my throat and my heart contract. Mum and Dad looking ridiculously young on the steps of St Peter’s, the Italian church in Clerkenwell. Nana and Grandpa Larry to one side of them – tall and solemn and stoic – and Nonna and Papa on the other – small and proud and strained. Grandpa Larry died only a couple of years later – from lung disease; Nana Larry in 1975. What do I say to Dad about this photo? What did I always say to him about the faces of the four parents and his boyish grin and Mum’s pretty smile? I say how happy they all look. How hopeful. As if hope matters.

Dad nods. He places his forefinger to his lips and momentarily closes his eyes. ‘Where’s the photo of me with Jack Templeton outside the Roundhouse?’ he asks, after a beat. ‘When we went to see Blondie in ’seventy-eight?’

I’m happy to move on and flick through the faded photos. Some are a composite: a square photo with three or four smaller squares down the side, all with white borders. ‘Here it is. You’re wearing that jacket with the enormous collar and Jack looks like a proper dandy!’

‘What a gig,’ says Dad. The Roundhouse is literally just up the street from us. We hear the concerts sometimes, even through the closed window. I’ve never been there. ‘Remember Parallel Lines, their album?’

‘You used to play it all the time,’ I say. Before we lost the guide dogs, I want to add, but I don’t. ‘You should put it on again.’

‘Maybe,’ says Dad. ‘What about a picture of me by the Albert Hall?’

‘Yes, that’s here.’

‘Describe it to me, Prue.’

‘Well, you look sunburnt—’ I say.

‘Summer of ’seventy-six,’ interrupts Dad. ‘What a time to be alive! Aren’t they saying this year’s heatwave could be the longest since then?’

‘I believe they are,’ I reply. ‘And you’re stretched out on the grass opposite, the sun in your eyes. It looks like late afternoon.’