He has stopped still on the pavement. The milling people tut and swerve round us. A man in a suit and tie flashes me a sympathetic smile. I sigh. This has not been a success. We should never have come out or come this far. It’s too difficult. Dad is too grumpy. Our comfort zone is dangerously out of reach. We’re better in the flat, not talking. We’ve missed most of This Morning for this.

‘OK,’ I say, with a huge sigh of relief. ‘Let’s go home.’

CHAPTER 8

Dad and I don’t walk back to Chalk Farm. We take the tube from Camden Town underground station – one stop on the Northern Line. Our carriage is fairly empty and we get seats next to each other, Dad’s cane between us and not much else. He is silent, unwilling to talk. I let my eyes roam round the carriage. The guy opposite us is in a Choose Life T-shirt and has headphones on; he must have his volume cranked right up as I can hear what he’s playing. It’s not Wham!, as his T-shirt might suggest, but James Brown’s ‘Get Up’. Three other people in the carriage are tapping one or both feet in time to the beat; I look down and my foot is tapping, too.

‘Our own gig,’ remarks a young woman to my right, in a flagrant breach of people-don’t-talk-to-strangers-on-the-tube protocol.

‘Yes,’ I reply.

Dad’s feet do not tap; he is motionless and his eyes are closed until the tube pulls into Chalk Farm station. It’s London: One, the Albertas: Nil, I muse. We gave it a go, but it was a big fat fail, this day-trip lark. We should never have put ourselves out there.

Back in the flat, I change out of my dress and into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, then go to my chair. It’s a relief to be back, far from the baffling crowds and the noise and the hurricane of life. Here with the window shut and the world outside muffled and at a comfortable arm’s length, I can breathe again. My phone is in my hand; I’ve missed being on it and return to it like an old friend.

‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ asks Dad, from the kitchen.

‘Yes, please.’

He seems relieved to be back, too. The baseball cap has been put away, probably for good, along with the notion we might ever venture out again. We are home and it’s better if we stay that way.