‘Oh, God.’ Dad gets up from the chair and walks to the kitchen – he knows exactly how many steps it is from here to there and doesn’t need his cane – where he starts clattering around. I always leave him to it; he doesn’t require help in the kitchen, unless something does something it shouldn’t – like a rogue lid flinging itself off a jar and on to the floor.

‘Another Leslie Green fan!’ I call to him.

‘They all love Leslie!’ he calls back.

Leslie Green was the architect who designed Chalk Farm underground station and forty-nine other tube stations, in a five-year period from the early 1900s – before he died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-three. I know a lot about the long-admired Leslie Green. Dad knows an awful lot more. But we will turn down the inquisitive magazine person, like we always do. Dad doesn’t want anyone coming into his beloved home, doesn’t want to talk to anyone about anything, even the things he is most interested in. I mean, he bought this flat because of Leslie Green. But he won’t engage with anyone about it now.

I put the letter in the recycling box in the hall, then go and stand in the doorway of the kitchen. The room has been organized so it’s easier for Dad. We have talking scales and measuring jugs. Braille labels. All spices and condiments and sauces are kept in wicker baskets, so things can’t be accidentally swept on to the floor. Neither of us is the tallest – I’m tiny, actually – and everything is no more than shoulder height, to avoid droppages. And everything goes back in its place in a military system. Only twenty per cent of blind people are actually totally blind, so many visually impaired people may have items colour-coded in a kitchen – with heightened contrasts between light and dark – but my dad is one of the unlucky twenty per cent with NLP: No Light Perception. He’s been blind since 17 August 1980.

‘I don’t need any help, Prue.’

‘I know you don’t.’

Dad is already getting out chopping boards and utensils. He makes delicious food for us both every night, in near silence. Once upon a time he used to cook to music: to The Kinks and The Doors and The Jam and the New Faces. He used to hum along or sing as he worked. We have a really good music system here, excellent speakers, but we don’t use it any more. We also have a vintage record player in the corner of the sitting room, but the duck-egg-blue lid stays closed.

‘So, go away and leave me to it. Go and catch up on all your women.’