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Theo watched me as I answered. I indicated we could carry on walking while I took the call.

‘Hey, Dad,’ I said. ‘Everything all right?’

‘I’ve seen something in the diary about an appointment. In the morning. But I’ve got no idea what it’s for.’

‘It’s a doctor’s appointment, Dad. Just a check-up. Kate’s taking you.’

‘How are we going to get there, then? Will Kate take her car?’

I glanced at Theo who was pretending not to listen in.

‘Yes, she’ll have to drive, Dad. And she’ll take your wheelchair in case the disabled parking bay’s taken and you have to park on one of the side streets.’

I made a mental note to remind Kate about all of this. She’d complained to high heaven when I’d told her about the appointment, and I’d purposely left it until I was on myway to the airport to tell her because I’d have a legitimate reason to cut the call short. She couldn’t handle Dad being in a wheelchair. She felt like everyone was looking at them, she said; pitying them. Kate hated being pitied, which I thought was a trait that might run in the family because I couldn’t stand it, either. But on the other hand, I also did what I had to do, and if that involved a tussle with a wheelchair in the GP’s car park, so be it.

I managed to end the call with Dad pretty swiftly by telling him I was in a beautiful French village and needed to take some photos and that I’d send him some.

Theo fell back into step beside me with his hands in his pockets. I thought he’d probably be all coy and pretend he hadn’t ear-wigged on my entire conversation, because that’s what I would have done, but he surprised me almost instantly.

‘What’s happening with your dad?’ he asked, looking at me with concern.

Well this was new. No edging around the topic, just straight in there. And it was an open question, too, so I couldn’t fob him off with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. I hesitated, unsure how much to tell him. I so rarely talked about it that a well-practised explanation didn’t roll off my tongue and I’d usually stutter and skirt around the issue and the person who’d asked would usually end up wishing they hadn’t bothered in the first place. I thought I might try something different, in the spirit of Melissa’s task. This could be one of the three things about myself that Theo didn’t know, I supposed.

‘He had a stroke,’ I told him. ‘A couple of years ago. He’s paralysed on the left side of his body so he needs quite a lot a care.’

Strangely, I felt a wave of emotion that I wasn’t expecting.I never let myself get maudlin about Dad. What would be the point? It had happened and that was that and I went to great lengths to avoid the outpouring of sympathy I assumed I’d get if I told people how difficult things really were. Theo wasn’t giving me sympathy, exactly; he was listening. Which somehow felt worse.

‘Sorry to hear that,’ he said, his voice low and soft. ‘That must be hard for you.’

To give myself a chance to compose myself, I paused to look at a painting propped up on an easel outside a gallery. It was of a beautiful woman wearing an oriental-style gown. Theo looked at it, too, but I could sense he was more interested in hearing what I had to say.

‘It’s fine,’ I said, because it was what I always said. ‘You just have to get on with these things, don’t you? We’ve got it all under control. It’s just that I do most of the organising and taking him to appointments, usually. I don’t like my siblings having to do it, they’ve got busy enough lives as it is.’

I could see Theo was watching me, taking it all in, even though I’d made a concerted effort to keep my annoyingly watery eyes peeled on the painting. I was hard-wired to cope with anything, or to at least look like I was. But for some reason, it felt difficult to be that way in front of Theo.

‘So it mostly falls to you?’ he said. ‘Even though you’re busy, too?’

‘Uh-huh.’ For some reason I couldn’t actually speak, it was like a lump had formed in my throat. This was very unusual indeed.

‘What about your mum?’ asked Theo, pointing to a doorway that looked like the gateway to Narnia. I followed him inside, immediately finding myself in the tiniest church, hidden from the outside, but glorious inside. I tipped myhead back, taking in the small but impressive nave; the central aisle had only two rows of benches. The stained glass windows were made up of gorgeous colours depicting scenes from the Bible – fuchsia pinks, electric blues and emerald greens. To our right was a vestry with a stand holding twenty or thirty candles pressed into coloured glass jars and above their flickering light, Christ on the cross. I got a couple of euros out of my bag, popped them into the donation tin and lit a candle, adding it to the ones already on the stand. I found it a comfort that there were other grieving people, always, even in this miniscule place. Being here, in this little church that we’d stumbled upon by chance, and the fact we had it all to ourselves, just Theo and me, looking up at the beautiful curved roof of the church, with the only sound the faint hiss of flames, I felt brave enough to tell him.

‘My mum died,’ I said, getting it out there before I could run for the hills, or the nearby Alps, perhaps. ‘When I was nine. She had cancer and they caught it too late.’

Cue dramatic reaction. At least, that was what usually happened when I revealed the tragic turn of events that had rendered me motherless before I’d turned ten. People would pull me in for hugs, and gush about how sorry they were and how awful it must have been and poor me, poor little nine-year-old Scarlett. It made me cringe, to be honest, and I avoided it at all costs. I had nightmares about having to go into school in the days afterwards, how my teacher had moved me to the front of the class so she could keep an eye on me, how the other parents had whispered and cried at home time.

‘That’s very young to lose your mother,’ said Theo quietly.

Oh. This was different. He wasn’t being particularly over the top. He was calm and measured without being dismissive or acting like he couldn’t handle talking about somebodydying (another common reaction, resulting in people moving on to another topic as quickly as was humanly possible).

‘There’s no good time, really, is there?’ I said.

‘No, but there’s definitely a bad one,’ he said.

Perhaps I should stop making such a big deal out of telling people, because this actually didn’t feel too bad. And I most definitely was not alone when it came to experiencing bereavement. Sometimes it had felt like it before, but less so now I was in my thirties. Some of my friends had joined me in having lost a parent and I always felt bad for them, because I knew exactly how awful it was going to be, for a while, at least. Forever, really.

‘Just checking, this definitely counts towards my task, right?’ I said, hoping to lighten the mood and also because this meant I only had one more thing to divulge about myself. It would be his turn next and I could grill him if I wanted to – I wasn’t going to let him get away with superficial stuff about books and loving dogs, the trivia that I could easily have read on his Amazon author page. Not that I’d looked at it, I hasten to add.

‘Of course,’ he said, wincing. ‘I mean, I have to say, you’ve set the bar for big reveals pretty high.’