I’ve never remembered this conversation before, I don’t think, or maybe I’ve remembered it and didn’t understand its significance.

Did I mention that my dad was a bit weird in the days before he died? If I didn’t it’s because of a kind of loyalty, I guess. I want you to think the best of him, like I do, and I don’t like remembering how he made me feel.

My dad hugged me, sure. But in the last couple of days he hugged me longer and harder. Like, really hard, so that it hurt a bit. And he took to kissing me, which I know loads of dads do, but mine didn’t really, not since I was very little. I did mention that, yeah.

Anyway, a couple of nights before he died, he came into my room when I had gone to bed and I asked him to tell me a story, and he went very quiet.

“From when you were little.”

He shook his head. “Not tonight. Tonight it’s a made-up story.” I didn’t really mind, even though Dad’s made-up stories were a bit rubbish usually. It was just nice having him there. And this story was one that sounded like he’d planned it. I mean, Dad’s stories were normally full of hesitations and stuff, because he was making them up as he went along, but this one wasn’t.

“There was once a young man who lived in a village next to the mighty Ganges, and one day he was visited by the goddess Kali, which in Sanskrit means ‘She Who Is Death’, and she is a very, very scary goddess with a blue face and a necklace made of the heads she has cut off …”

“Gross,” I say.

“Yep. Completely gross. And she said to the young man who was called … um …”

“Trevor?” It was part of the fun with Dad’s Indian stories to give the characters names that were as un-Indian as we could think of.

“Yes. Trevor. Trevor O’Sullivan. And she said to Trevor O’Sullivan, ‘I shall give you the gift of clairvoyance, O Trevor’…”

“What’s clairvoyance?”

“Seeing the future. And he said, ‘O Great Kali. Ta very much!’ And he went down to the Ganges and peered into the water where he was told he would see his future, but nothing did he see. And verily he summoned Kali thus: ‘Oi Kali, come ’ere!’ And Kali appeared before him and said, ‘What do you want, Trevor O’Sullivan?’ and he said, ‘I can see no future,’ and Kali said, ‘Funny, that,’ and sliced off his head and strung it on her necklace.”

“Oh, that’s nasty!”

“Indeed it is. And the moral, Al, is if ever you are offered a look at your own future, never take it. The future will look after itself, without any help from you.”

And he hugged me hard and kissed me.