It’s a handsome station, Chalk Farm – one of several original Victorian underground stations in the city. A curved wedge of a building under glazed oxblood tiles undimmed by time, with a rounded prow overlooking the intersection of two busy north-west London streets: Adelaide Road and Haverstock Hill. Our flat, The Palladian, a conversion done in Edwardian times, starts four semicircular Diocletian windows back on each side (I’m not sure what’s behind the further two, nothing now, but I imagine they once housed dusty offices full of typewriters and men in green visors) and extends into the apex, fronted by a magnificent Palladian window – a large central arch with two rectangular side panels – which presides rather grandly over the streets below.

Found it! I unlock the doors and step inside. The man looks disappointed. Did he want me to invite him in and take him up the winding iron stairs with me? Point out to him the metallic green jangle of incomprehensible spaghetti pipes below them, the old Victorian framed poster leaning against the peeling wall to the left, which says, ‘Avoid all Anxiety! Take the Two Penny Tube’? Show him to the plain white front door of The Palladian, with its absence of knocker and bell and letter box (there’s a narrow letter box at the base of one of the double doors; I’ve shoved the two envelopes that were waiting on the mat in my bag), but with a brass handle more suited to an interior door – where I insert my second key?

‘I’m back, Dad!’ I call, as I open the door. Our small hall is bright, white and has sweet touches like Bakelite light switches and tiny alcove shelves. Our flat has intricate cornicing, deep skirting boards and a honeyed-oak parquet floor throughout. Behind its plain white door, it has charm and character and panelled doors and ceiling roses. It’s pretty; in fact, this quirky Grade II listed flat is far too pretty for us two dull misfits – blind father, disfigured daughter. There should be a glamorous woman of a certain age called Gloria living here, who alternates her hours lying decorously on a faded chaise longue in a palm-print kaftan and wafting into the West End to truffle for goodies at the Harrods Food Hall.

‘OK!’ Dad calls from the sitting room at the front of the flat. I know exactly where he’ll be: sitting in his armchair with his feet up on the footstool.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me how I got on?’