“George is downstairs,” he said. “He’s got some mad idea you’re going to help him in the yard.” Alicia looked horrified. “It’s all right. He doesn’t know you’re here.”

“But he’ll be here for ages, he always is.” Alicia sighed dramatically. “So now I’m trapped up here. Brilliant.”

“So you have got plans, then?”

“Dad!”

“What? I’m only asking.”

He hated seeing her look at him as if he was her gaoler. Suddenly inspired, he held out his hand.

“I know what,” he said. “But you’ll have to be quiet.”

She put her notebook (Short stories? Alter ego? Letters to her friends?) in the oilcloth backpack he’d bought her for her birthday, bemused by its seventy-pound price tag, and scuffled into her trainers.

“What are we doing?”

“You’ll see.”

They crept down the corridor, treading gently, avoiding creaky floorboards, Alicia trying not to giggle. He hadn’t used these skills for years, but it was true what they said, whatever they said, something about never forgetting how to fall off a log… He opened the bathroom door and ushered her inside.

“Don’t ever, ever do this again,” he warned, opening the window. Outside was the flat roof of the back porch, a thick ugly slab of concrete but easily strong enough to take twice his weight, never mind Alicia’s. “Down onto the porch. Onto the bins, then down. Don’t jump, you hear me? Do not jump. Just sit down, dangle your legs over, then drop.”

“Are you serious?”

“Before I change my mind.”

He thought she might be frightened, but she hooked her leg coolly over the windowsill and dropped onto the porch in one smooth movement. Then she leaned in through the window and gave him a quick kiss.

“You’re the best,” she told him.

“I’m the worst,” he said. “If Social Services ever hear I let you climb out the bathroom window… ”

“You saved me from George,” Alicia insisted. “You’re my hero. Bye.”

He swallowed the lump in his throat and watched with pride and terror as his teenage daughter slipped over the edge of the concrete roof, onto the bins, then down and across the car park and out of sight. Her hero. The perfect dad who vanquished monsters and took her on adventures.

Feeling slightly ashamed of the pleasure it gave him to thwart George, he decided it was now his duty to go back into the bar and take over from Mike the task of keeping their visitor entertained. He rehearsed the sentences in his head, bracing himself for the conversation. ‘Now then, George. How are you? Having a good day? Alicia? She’s gone out with her friends. No, I don’t know where, they’ll probably be out for the day… ’

As he thumped back down the stairs, he realised that, actually, he really didn’t know where Alicia had gone, or who she’d gone with.

That’s why they have mobile phones, stupid.

Nevertheless, he would have preferred her to tell him something – even a comforting lie. Her insistence on keeping vast swathes of her life a careful blank made him unsettled and nervous, convinced she must have something to hide.