I slip off my flip-flops, leaving them on the front doormat – a very flat, rubber variety, so that whenever I do take Dad out, he doesn’t trip and headbutt the inside of the door before he’s even stepped outside. Our whole flat is blind-proof; it was done before we moved in. And the layout here is perfect for Dad. Off to the right is a door that leads to his bedroom, beyond that is the bathroom; on the left is my bedroom, then the cosy spare bedroom where we keep our clothes now, then our galley kitchen. And the tiny hall opens out into the sitting room, where the grand Palladian window proudly flares its curved nose over the street below.

‘How did you get on?’ Vince Alberta, former architect, current recluse, sits in his faithful chair several feet back from the window. The chair is a modern lazy boy with a steel base. Dad’s feet, in Union Jack socks, rest on a Moroccan leather pouffe. He’s wearing stay-press trousers and a white Fred Perry T-shirt.

My dad is not that old. He had me young, very young: he’s sixty-four.

‘Well, I’m all sorted,’ I say, resting my hand briefly on his slight but firm upper arm. ‘Apparently the tooth is saved.’

Dad looks up at me and gives me a short smile. You wouldn’t, at first glance, think he is blind. One eye looks slightly narrower than the other, nothing else is remarkable; but your second glance, and definitely your third, would tell you those eyes are unseeing – that they are slightly milky-looking and without focus.

‘Good,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure I could have put up with all the howling.’

‘Well, no.’

Dad doesn’t like any noise – really, any sounds, particularly words, especially my words. He returns, as ever, to his iPad with the connected Braille reader, a nifty device the size of a small keyboard that converts text to Braille, courtesy of rounded pins on its surface. He’s currently reading the biography of famous architect Norman Foster – again.

‘What are we having for dinner tonight?’ I ask him.

‘Carbonara,’ he says, without looking up.

‘Lovely.’

Dad cooks. He’s Italian, and as well as retaining the rhythm and inflection of the accent, he has both inherited and perpetuated my grandmother’s utter brilliance in the kitchen. I am a terrible cook – you could have grouted a shower with the last creamy pasta sauce I attempted, and the drop scones I made at school were literal – and a very bad tea maker, but I wash up. I have some uses.

‘I’ve done the laundry,’ adds Dad, his head still bowed over the iPad, his finger tracing the surface of the Braille reader. ‘Will you be able to eat? The tooth?’

‘Yes, I’ll be fine.’

I walk across the parquet flooring and place my ineffective bag on the narrow console table in front of the window.