‘I don’t know,’ he adds carefully. ‘I suppose I was so disillusioned with the whole notion of it that for such a long time – after your mother – I simply didn’t have the energy, and all the energy I had, I poured into you girls, which I don’t regret for a second, by the way.’

‘No,’ I say. This is a new answer. And he’s mentioned Mum in it, which is surprising.

‘And then time just went on,’ he adds. ‘I became blind and time just went on.’

We walk. A bird clatters out of a tree wedged between two buildings and soars into the sky. Yes, I reflect; after our mother, everything changed. For Dad and for Angela and for me. Her absence sliced something into us that we then had to gather round, to fill. We had to be more than the gap she left, the three of us. We tried so hard to be, for a long time. To put all our energy into filling that giant, mother-shaped hole. ‘But still. There might be someone out there for you now. You never know.’

‘It’s all a bit late,’ Dad echoes, ‘and we were talking about you.’

‘Love is overrated,’ I repeat.

There’s a road sweeper on the pavement in front of us so I tell Dad we need to cross to the sunny side of the street. A white van waits for us to cross. We walk with the sun in our faces until we get to the junction with Monument Street. I’m sad I’ve just lied to Dad. I’m sad because love is not overrated at all. I know what it is and how much it hurts when you love someone who can never love you back. And I don’t need to open my eyes to romance. I don’t want to. I’ve seen who is out there and he can’t be mine and never will, and now I’ve seen him again – this beautiful man in my memory and my heart, who I now have an up-to-date vision of to torture myself with – I feel a hollowness re-open in my soul that I know has the danger to swallow me alive.

‘Thank you,’ Dad says finally, as we stand by the column of the monument to commemorate the Great Fire of London and he has finished telling me of its provenance, of Christopher Wren and Dr Robert Hooke, who designed it. ‘Thank you for bringing me out today, for forcing me out of the door. St Dunstan in the East … it’s magical, isn’t it? Did you think so?’