Is he nervous? I know he would never admit it if he was, but we both know he hasn’t been further than the doctor’s for years. When he had the dogs, he went everywhere. Did everything. Family glue, those guide dogs were. When a lovely lady came to The Palladian and took away our last dog, Folly, on a rainy day one autumn, and she trotted out the door so sweetly and so resignedly, it broke all three of our hearts, but Dad’s shut down that day and we knew that was the end of the little life we had known. He became just a kernel of the man he was before. A man who retreated into his armchair without hope, and no desire to look for it again.

Not that I can talk.

‘Is the Enterprise pub still here?’ asks Dad.

‘Yep, still here,’ I say. God, we’ve got a long way to go.

‘And the hi-fi shop?’

‘Nope, that’s gone. Do you need water yet, Dad?’ I have a small bottle in my bag.

‘We’ve only just left the flat, Prue; of course I don’t!’

He is nervous. I haven’t seen him this snappy for a long time. We both need to chill out, I think. It’s only a seven-minute walk from Chalk Farm tube station to Camden Lock – we’re acting like we’re hiking to John o’Groat’s. In a hurricane.

‘Careful, Dad. Single file here.’ Half of the pavement is gone, suddenly, cordoned off with scaffolding. There’s a smooth little manoeuvre we employ for narrow paths, almost like a dance move. My left arm goes behind my back, for Dad to hold on to; he takes smaller steps not to tread on my heels, and we go single file.

‘God bless you,’ says an old man as we pass him under the scaffolding.

‘Why, thank you, good sir,’ says Dad, all Dickensian. I know he is being thoroughly sarcastic. He’s always had this when he goes out: people blessing him left, right and centre. I’ve forgotten how ‘blessed’ Dad can be.

‘OK, you can come back next to me,’ I say to Dad, once the pavement opens up again.

‘Keep going straight?’ he asks as he returns to take my arm above the elbow.

‘Keep going straight.’

We walk. Dad taps. My fringe sticks to my forehead.

‘Whereabouts are we now, Prue?’ Dad asks after a while.

‘We’re just coming past all the tattoo parlours.’ The smell of food is beginning to come our way now; music starts to pump out of shop doorways. I wonder how many times he and Mum walked past these shops as teenagers. How many times they went jeans shopping.