‘Urggggghhh,’ she growled, closing her eyes and shaking her head. ‘He woke me up in the middle of the night because he was banging about, bringing all the chairs from the kitchen into here and arranging them in a circle.’

‘Why was he doing that?’

‘He said he had a staff meeting the following morning.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I lost my temper, I told him he retired fifteen years ago and there are no staff meetings any more.’

‘And how did he respond?’

‘He got very frustrated. We went round and round in circles for such a long time, Nina, honestly, I thought we were going to throttle each other.’

‘Have you checked Elstree High?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think he’d be there.’

‘It’s the last school he taught at. He could be misremembering that he’s retired, so he might have got up early to go to school. Ring Elstree High.’

‘It’s a Saturday.’

‘It’s still worth trying. Did he take his phone?’

‘No, just his wallet.’

‘Okay, so he could have got on a bus or a tube. Or a taxi, even.’

I went into my bedroom for a moment of quiet and I sat on the carpet, closed my eyes and tried to imagine where Dad might have felt a pull so urgent he had to get out of bed, dress and leave the house before sunrise. I leant my back up against the bed, my legs crossed on the floor. Whenever I was in a crisis, I found myself on the carpet. I wrote the last two chapters of my book on the floor. Most of mine and Joe’s break-up conversation took place sitting on our living-room floor. When things became too big, I needed to make myself as small as possible. I thought about sitting cross-legged with my toys under the mulberry tree in Albyn Square. I thought about being there the last time I’d seen Max – how it had felt like I was sucked into it by a life force; how all the markers and memories of time and place had twisted in on themselves like a black hole as I stood in its centre. I thought about Lola’s face on the floor of the club toilets the first night we’d met: I miss home.

I went into the hallway where Gloria, for reasons I couldn’t understand, was applying sparkly lip gloss.

‘What was the road Dad grew up on in Bethnal Green?’ I asked Mum.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied.

‘You must remember. Grandma Nelly lived there right up until she died.’

‘How could I possibly remember the name of that street? She died twenty years ago. Wait until you go through the menopause. You won’t be able to remember your own name.’

Gloria laughed knowingly, then smacked her glossy lips.

‘Don’t you have an address book with everyone’s old addresses in it?’

‘No, not from that far back. It might still be in my Christmas card address book, but I’m not sure where that is off the top of my head.’ Now was not the time to ask Mum why it was necessary to have both an address book and a Christmas card address book.

‘Can you find the exact address for me now? Text it to me? I’ll go to Bethnal Green.’

‘He’s not going to be there.’

‘I just have a gut feeling. It’s at least worth checking. Text me the address.’

By the time I arrived at the road where Dad grew up, it was mid-evening and there was still no sign of him. I walked along the row of identical two-bed terraced houses, all with white sash windows and sills that looked like the icing on gingerbread houses. My childhood mind had remembered these buildings as grand and imposing but they were compact and closely packed. Mum and Dad often laughed about the story I once wrote in my school exercise book, in which I described going to my gran’s ‘manshun’ at the weekend. I couldn’t believe her house had an upstairs and a downstairs.

I rang the bell at number 23. A woman opened the door – she was middle-aged and soft-faced, with hair in a chignon that was transitioning from red to white, which made it look like a scoop of butterscotch ice cream.

‘Hello, I’m so sorry to disturb you, my dad is missing –’

‘He’s here,’ she said, ushering me in and closing the door. ‘He’s here, he’s safe. Go through.’ I walked along the hallway, so different to the house I remember, now painted in creams and greys and adorned with the tastes and treasures of another family.

‘Dad!’ I walked through to him, where he was drinking tea at their kitchen table, reading the newspaper. The sound of Saturday night TV gently bubbled in the background, as comforting as the sound of simmering soup. He looked up at me.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked him.

‘I’m here to see my mother,’ he said. ‘My mother, Nelly Dean, lives here.’

‘She used to live here.’

Dad sighed. ‘Christ on a bike – this is her bleeding house! I know it like the back of my hand. I’m not leaving until I see her.’

‘But the problem is, Dad –’

‘Would you like a drink?’ the woman asked.

‘I’m okay, thank you.’ I imagined the long night ahead, trying to convince Dad to leave this stranger’s house. The woman beckoned me back into the hallway where we stood by the door. ‘I’m sorry. It’s his memory, he –’

‘My dad had the same,’ she said, putting her hand on my shoulder in a gesture that I found so disconcertingly caring, it made me realize how much I yearned for maternal solace. ‘I understand. It’s not a problem, don’t worry. It was clear as soon as he arrived what was going on. We haven’t told him that his mum doesn’t live here, we’ve tried to distract him.’

‘That’s so kind of you. When did he get here?’

‘A couple of hours ago. He was very sweet and polite. Once we worked out what was going on, we made him a cup of tea and rang the police to let them know his full name and that he was here.’

‘Thank God you live here. There are so many people who would have turned him away and he would have been wandering around out in the cold with no phone.’

‘He was clearly just confused.’

‘He was born in this house. He grew up here with my grandma and his brother. Then my grandma lived here until she died.’

‘How did you know he’d be here?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think the memory of your childhood home is impossible to destroy. I can imagine it becoming even sharper and clearer to someone in his condition. I don’t know how I’m going to explain what’s going on to him.’

‘I’m not sure how far into this you are, but something we learnt with my dad is that it was much easier for him if we didn’t argue with any of the illusions he found himself in.’

‘I have tried to do that sometimes. Didn’t you feel like you were lying to him?’

‘A bit,’ she said with a shrug. ‘But there’s a way of not contradicting what he’s saying without encouraging it either.’

‘That’s good to know.’

‘You will feel a bit silly. But it’s a bit of discomfort for you that will make such a huge difference to him.’

I nodded, relieved to finally have someone to talk to about this, without everything I said being dismissed.

‘Do you have kids?’

‘No.’

‘I was going to say, think about how you’d speak to your child if they had an imaginary friend, or they believed something to be true that wasn’t, but it brought them comfort. Going along with it rarely does anyone any harm. And then they get to the end of the thought at some point.’

We went back into the kitchen where Dad was looking in the cupboards.

‘What are you after, Dad?’ I asked.

‘A tin of sardines. She keeps them in here usually. I fancy some sardines on toast.’

‘Why don’t we head back to Pinner and I can make that for you. Nelly’s obviously out today, so maybe it’s best if we head off. You can tell me all about your mum and this house on the way home.’

Dad frowned for a moment, then turned to the woman whose kitchen he was rifling through.

‘Will you tell her I was here? Will you tell her I dropped by to say hello?’

‘Of course, Bill. I’ll be sure to pass on your message.’

He nodded, then closed the cabinet door.

I ordered a taxi to take us home and put up with the extortionate price of the long journey to avoid agitating Dad further on a busy tube on a Saturday night. I rang Mum to tell her what had happened and she was relieved. We spent the majority of the journey in silence, Dad staring out of the window, hypnotized by the A40.

‘I don’t know why my mum wasn’t there,’ he said.

‘She was probably just busy doing some errands or meeting people today.’

‘My dad wasn’t there because my dad left.’

‘That’s right.’

‘He left when I was ten years old, for Marjorie who lived on the next road along. They’ve both moved away now.’

‘Yep,’ I said, remembering Dad’s childhood photo albums that had fewer than ten pictures of the grandfather I never met, then a space for a missing man in every other image until the pages ran out. ‘They have.’

‘But my mother is still waiting for him,’ he said. ‘She will keep waiting and waiting for him for ever, I imagine. She stands at the letterbox every day when the post comes, but nothing ever comes from him. He’s not coming back. We will never see him or speak to him again.’