Pete’s Records is packed, with reggae music pounding through its aisles. Dad is partial to that as well – the roots of Mod, he says. I feel helplessly out of place in here, immediately. I always have, in Camden. It’s far too cool for me. I used to come with my (short-lived) best friend, Georgina, from school, and when I did, I just used to agree with her about stuff, pretending I liked whatever she liked. Following her into places she wanted to go. Mooching in the doorways she wanted to mooch in. I’ve never had a ‘scene’, but if I did, Camden definitely wouldn’t be it. My female singer-songwriters would fit in very well here, though, with their bare feet and their freedom and their roars of confidence; but I am nothing like them. They aren’t afraid of fierce; they aren’t afraid of ugly. I am afraid.

‘Ska records, please,’ says Dad. I look around and spot the handwritten sign, suspended from the ceiling. We stand at the correct rack and I leaf through the cardboard album sleeves of hundreds and hundreds of records. Vinyl records are making a comeback, apparently – they survived the CD and iPods and Spotify and iTunes – and video never did kill the radio star, after all.

‘Who are you interested in?’ I ask.

‘Just read artists out to me,’ he says.

I leaf through the records. ‘OK, The Selecter, The Specials, this one is by Skarface.’ I hold it up.

‘French group. Crazy black-and-white illustrated cover?’

‘Yes.’

He nods. ‘Fantastic, fantastic. I’ve read about them. Give it to me.’

I hand him the record and he runs his hand over it. He reaches inside and pulls the record from its sleeve. Surely Dad doesn’t want to buy anything? He hasn’t used that turntable for years. He skirts a finger over the black vinyl, then slips it back into its sleeve, before handing it to me so I can slot it back into its alphabetical space.

‘You should play your old records,’ I say. ‘I’d like to hear music in the flat again. Proper music, not just through headphones, and at a decent volume. Wouldn’t you?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Dad. He beetles his fingers over the top of a stack of records. Back and forward. Back and forward. A woman in green dreadlocks manoeuvres round his cane. ‘OK,’ he says finally. ‘Let’s move on.’

We shuffle out into the midday throng again, assaulted by the smells and the colour and the sounds and the heat of a busy Camden at lunchtime – the sun on our backs and reggae ringing in our ears.

‘Shall we get something to eat?’ I ask Dad.

‘No. I’d like to go home now,’ he says.

‘What? Really?’

‘Yes, really. I want to go back to the flat now, Prue.’