She hit the button on the machine, letting out a cacophony of buzzing as the cubes pulverized to a pale-green gunk.

‘I don’t know if I’d call it sudden,’ she shouted over the top of the electronic roar. She turned the blender off and poured the fibrous-looking liquid into a pint glass.

‘That sounds great, Mum,’ I relented. ‘I think it’s really cool to be so engaged and curious.’

‘It is,’ she said. ‘And I’m the only one who has a spare room, so I’ve said we can use it for Reading Between the Wines meetings.’

‘You don’t have a spare room.’

‘Your dad’s study.’

‘Dad needs his study.’

‘It will still be there for him, it just doesn’t make sense to have a whole room in this house that’s only occasionally used, like we’re living in Blenheim Palace.’

‘What about his books?’

‘I’ll move them to the shelves down here.’

‘What about his paperwork?’

‘I’ve got everything important on file. There’s a lot of stuff that can be thrown away.’

‘Please let me go through it,’ I said with the slight whine of a stroppy child. ‘It might be important to him. It might be important for us further down the line when we need as much as possible to jog his memory, to remind him of –’

‘Of course, of course,’ she said, taking a sip of her smoothie with her nostrils flaring in displeasure. ‘It’s all upstairs in a few piles, you’ll see it on the landing.’

‘Okay, thank you,’ I said, offering her a muted smile as a peace offering. I took a deep, invisible yoga breath. ‘What else has been going on?’

‘Nothing really. Oh, I’ve decided to change my name.’

‘What? Why?’

‘I’ve never liked Nancy, it’s too old-fashioned.’

‘Don’t you think it’s weird to change it now? Everyone knows you as Nancy, it’s too late for a new name to catch on.’

‘I’m too old is what you’re saying,’ she said.

‘No, I’m just saying a more appropriate time to workshop a new name would have been your first week at secondary school, probably not in your fifties.’

‘Well, I’ve decided to change it and I’ve looked into how to do it and it’s very easy, so my mind’s made up.’

‘And what are you changing it to?’

‘Mandy.’

‘Mandy?’

‘Mandy.’

‘But,’ I took another deep yoga breath, ‘Mandy isn’t all that dissimilar to Nancy, is it? I mean, they sort of rhyme.’

‘No they don’t.’

‘They do, it’s called assonance.’

‘I knew you’d be like this. I knew you’d find a way to lecture me like you always do. I have no idea why this should cause you any trouble, I just want to love my name.’

‘Mum!’ I said pleadingly. ‘I’m not lecturing you. You must be able to see this is quite a strange thing to announce from nowhere.’

‘It’s not from nowhere, I’ve always told you I like the name Mandy! I have always said to you what a stylish and fun name I think it is.’

‘Okay, it is stylish and fun, you’re right, but the other thing to consider,’ I lowered my voice, ‘is that this might not be the best time for Dad to get his head round his wife of thirty-five years having a completely different first name.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, it’s a very simple change,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t have to be this huge thing.’

‘It’s just going to confuse him.’

‘I can’t talk about this now,’ she said. ‘I’m meeting Gloria for Vinyasa Flow.’

‘Are you not eating with us? I’ve come all the way here for lunch.’

‘There’s loads of food in the house. You’re the cook, after all. I’ll be back in a few hours,’ she said, picking up her keys.

I went back in to see Dad, still engrossed by the paper.

‘Dad?’

‘Yes, Bean?’ he said, turning his head round to me. I felt the glow of relief that came with him using his childhood nickname for me. Like all good childhood nicknames, it had had many nonsensical and convoluted iterations – what was once Ninabean turned into Mr Bean, Bambeanie, Beaniebean then finally just Bean.

‘Mum’s gone out so I’m going to make us some lunch in a bit. How do you feel about a frittata?’

‘Frittata,’ he repeated. ‘Now what’s that when it’s at home?’

‘It’s a tarty omelette. Imagine an omelette on a night out.’

He laughed. ‘Lovely.’

‘I’m just going to sort through some things upstairs first, then I’ll make it. Do you maybe want a piece of toast to keep you going? Or something else?’ I looked at his face and instantly regretted not making the question simpler. For the most part, he was still completely capable of making quick decisions, but occasionally I could see him get lost in potential answers and I wished I’d saved his confusion by saying ‘Toast, yes or no?’

‘Maybe,’ he said, frowning slightly. ‘I don’t know, I’ll wait a bit.’

‘Okay, just let me know.’

I dragged the three boxes into my bedroom, which hadn’t changed since I moved out over a decade ago and looked like a museum replica of how teenage girls lived in the early to mid-noughties. Lilac walls, photo collages of school friends on the wardrobe and a row of frayed, greying festival wristbands hanging from my mirror that Katherine and I had collected together. I sifted through the papers on the floor, most of them marking time and plans but no feelings or relationships: wedges of Filofax pages of dentist appointments and term times from the late nineties, stacks of old newspapers containing stories that must have caught his interest. There were letters and cards that I took off the scrap heap: a garrulous postcard from his late brother, my Uncle Nick, tightly packed with complaints about the food being too oily on Paxos; a card from one of Dad’s former students thanking him for his help with his Oxford application, and a photo of him beaming on graduation day outside Magdalen College. Mum was right, he didn’t need these relics of mundanity, but I understood his inclination to hold on to them. I too had shoeboxes of cinema tickets from first dates with Joe and utility bills from flats I no longer lived in. I’d never known why they were important, but they were – they felt like proof of life lived, in case a time came when it was needed, like a driving licence or a passport. Perhaps Dad had always anticipated, somehow, that he should download the passing of time to papers, Filofax pages, letters and postcards, in case those files inside him ever got wiped.

Suddenly, I heard the piercing cry of the smoke alarm. I rushed downstairs, following the smell of burning. In the kitchen stood Dad, coughing over a smoking toaster, removing charcoal-edged pages of the Observer from its slots.

‘Dad!’ I shouted over the thin, shrill beep, flapping my hands to try to break up the smog. ‘What are you doing?’

He looked at me with a jolt, as if he had snapped out of a dream. Ribbons of smoke rose from the singed piece of folded newspaper in his hand. He gazed down at the toaster, then back up to me.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

2

He chose the pub. This was an enormous relief. Lola had been giving me a crash course in modern dating over a series of drinks and emails since my birthday and had warned me of all the impending disappointments to expect. One of them was that men were completely incapable of choosing or even suggesting a place for a date. I found this sort of apathetic, adolescent, can’t-be-arsed, useless-intern-says-he-still-doesn’t-know-how-to-use-the-printer attitude an immense turn-off. Lola told me to get over it, because otherwise I’d never confirm a date and the rest of my life would be spent in a sexless semi-coma on my sofa, sending the message ‘Hey, you still free tomorrow? What time? What do you fancy?’ back and forth on Linx to men I’d never, ever meet.

Max told me where we were going to meet within an hour of talking.

‘Dive bars and old-man pubs okay?’ he wrote.

‘They’re my favourite,’ I replied. ‘No one wants to go to them with me any more.’

‘Me neither.’

‘I feel like everyone loved them when we were students, but now they don’t because they’re no longer ironic.’

‘I think you’re right,’ he replied. ‘Maybe they think we’re edging too close towards being the old man to enjoy the old-man pubs.’

‘Maybe old-man pubs only bookend a person’s drinking life. Ironically when we’re teenagers, then earnestly when we’re retired,’ I typed.

‘And in between we’re stuck in a hell of gastropubs serving ￡9 sausage rolls.’

‘Totally.’

‘Meet me at The Institution in Archway at seven o’clock on Thursday,’ he wrote. ‘There’s a darts board, an old Irish landlord. Not a Negroni or industrial light fitting in sight.’

‘Perfect,’ I wrote.