I woke properly at dawn and lay with my eyes open while the light brightened round the edges of my curtains and an unfamiliar block of shadow beside the door became my suitcase, packed and ready to go. When I heard the newspaper drop through the letter box, about half past six, I went downstairs in my dressing gown.

I’d forgotten that Dad’s review would be published today. I noticed it as I was glancing down the Contents column and waiting for the kettle to boil: Arts & Books, page 13. Robert Lyell reviews the Wingate Gallery’s Art of Pity exhibition.

I spread the newspaper on the table and bit the corner off my toast.

What a Pity.

That was Dad’s choice of headline.

What a Pity in fat black letters above a sixteenth-century pen-and-ink sketch of The Good Samaritan. It was weird how my mouth dried up completely: one moment I was chewing on multiseed bread and apricot jam, the next my tongue was like dust. I put the rest of the toast on the sideboard and sat down. I could see Tom in his book-strewn flat, fumbling for the same page with his heart in his mouth.

Arts Editor Robert Lyell is moved by an exquisite selection of High Renaissance drawings, but clever-clever curation and waffling catalogue notes spoil the show.

Oh, Tom. Lovely Tom. I don’t know what he saw in us Lyells, or why he stuck around, unless it was for old times’ sake. I ironed the pages out with my hands and, as soon as I’d managed to swallow, I began to read.

Dad and I didn’t talk on the way to the station. I kept waiting for him to ask me what was up, but he never did. Sometimes I think he’s so comfortable with silences that he doesn’t realise how much their quality can vary. As far as I could see this counted as a difficult silence, and I didn’t understand why he was so carefree.

He took my suitcase for me as we left the tube and said, “Having second thoughts?” but I just shouldered my smaller bag and shook my head, without smiling or meeting his eye, and he seemed to think that was enough. I stood behind him on the escalator. The same posters recurred all the way up—Seen Anything Suspicious? . . . An Evening with the Stars! . . . Seen Anything Suspicious? . . . Your Chance to Dance! . . . Seen Anything Suspicious? . . . The Royal Ballet presents—and by the time we got to the top I felt as if I’d read them all a million times without making sense of a single one.

“I read the review,” I told him, finally, as we made our way onto the concourse. He looked ridiculous—a tall, grey-haired man wheeling a small plastic suitcase with a purple daisy motif—so I wrested it from his hand.