I take out my notebook and pen, but when I start to write, my father interrupts, and says, with his customary bluntness, ‘What are you doing? Don’t write it down, for God’s sake. I don’t want to be in the newspaper.’

Sighing, I slip the pad into my pocket. This is not an infrequent occurrence. Some people are happy to be photographed and quoted, a flirtation with fame, an injection to the ego. For others, it’s a terrifying prospect, committing one’s name to the starkness of newsprint, running the gauntlet of spiteful below-the-line comments from online readers.

It’s cold on the doorstep. A light snow is falling, landing on my coat and scarf. The idea of driving home to London in this weather fills me with dread. My father lifts his eyes to the pale grey skies. There’s a gruffness in his voice.

‘Look, why don’t you come in for a minute?’

I’m not sure how I feel about his invitation, but then he says, ‘I’ve got something that belongs to you,’ and the decision is made.

Being inside the house is like walking hand in hand with my past.

The carpet is the same ugly swirl of colour. The mahogany telephone table still stands in the hallway, next to a matching stool with claw feet. Even the smell hasn’t changed.

Homesickness, intense and sudden, squeezes my heart. As the years have passed, the hole left by my mother’s death has closed up. Not completely. Never that. But it’s no longer the raw, bloody mess it once was. Standing here, in the home we shared together, the wound splits open again. An urge to hear my mother’s voice; to feel the press of her hand on my shoulder; to dance and sing and laugh together overwhelms me, but she’s not here, and it’s as if I’m realizing it for the first time. A pain in my chest burns like a lightning strike.

‘Make sure you take your shoes off,’ my father says.

Maureen brings tea and a tentative smile, but she doesn’t stay, hovering in the sitting room for a minute, then disappearing when my father jerks his head at her. ‘Hop it, Mo. There’s a love.’

He heaps three sugars into his tea and does the same for me, even though I stopped taking sugar years ago, which is ironic when you think about it.

‘I’ll be back in a minute. Stay there.’

Where else am I going to go? But in the interests of keeping the peace, I stop myself from saying it out loud.

When he comes back, he’s carrying a box of oddments. Old photographs, school reports, diaries, ticket stubs, handwritten letters. He thrusts them at me. ‘I thought you might like these.’